The rain had ceased, and again for a brief space the mist descended, not now in a thick blanket, but in ragged masses, and a wind blew from the river. The deeper chill of evening cooled the air, and as pedestrians took on a livelier pace, he moved more briskly with them. At the corner of the square he stood still and watched the street-cars moving on the weblike tracks, and the bright lights of the automobiles weaving a pattern round them, and the larger circles of human beings perpetually revolving. The group of Salvation Army workers stood where they had stood months before, singing shrilly, with an accompaniment of tambourine music, an old and sentimental religious song set to a popular secular air. Their leader looked about with the same solemnity, the same canine determination to snatch as many souls as possible from eternal death. Amos looked and listened unmoved.
Then suddenly, as though by this dullness he had opened finally a gateway for the powers of darkness, there rose beside him a representative of that evil which he believed to be the chief evil of the world. A short, heavy woman whose black eyes sparkled behind a figured veil came up to him, so close that her shoulder touched his arm. He took an involuntary step, then he looked down.
"So am I, but I'm always glad for company. Perhaps you would come with me?"
The woman answered by turning back toward the dark street and Amos followed her. He walked lightly as though he walked without shoes, as an Arab might follow his master down a ghostly street. His folded arms might have held together a shrouding burnous, his air was secret. He turned like a soldier on parade into a dark hallway and climbed a flight of stairs and another and yet another, going as though he understood perfectly the object of his journey.
The last stairway opened into a room from which he could see an illuminated sky, and he realized that he was above the square. He could hear faintly against the sound of grinding brakes and automobile horns a confident declaration:
"I'm the child of a King, The child of a King, With Jesus my Saviour, I'm the child of a King."
His companion moved quietly about the back of the deep, dim room, her motions imagined and not seen. As she moved, it seemed to Amos as though some monstrous and evil thing was bearing down upon him, an enormous, indescribable instrument of woe. His terror was not only mental, but physical; he lifted his hands as if to ward off the crushing weight. At the same time he felt the whole situation to be unreal; and so keen was this impression that he expressed it aloud.