On he dashed through mud and puddles in the crooked streets or on the side-way, for he did not choose his path now through the empty blackness, now across a patch of moonlight, now under the dull glare of a lantern. He had no need to look behind, for his soul knew that she still followed. Suddenly he saw a narrow, crooked passage-way in front of him. Without pausing to think, he doubled like a hare and shot into it. It opened into a stony court surrounded with squalid houses, huge, black, silent. At the farther end was a blind wall, and Oliver's heart crumbled away within him, for an escape was at an end. He darted one look over his shoulder--she was there; he could just see the dim outline of her form flitting through the darkness. The next moment he ran headlong against the wall and there flattened himself, spreading out his palms over the rough surface, hiding his face against his hands, panting and sobbing like a dumb creature.
Five seconds passed, ten, twenty. Oliver looked fearfully over his shoulder, and then hid his face again; she was there, silent, motionless; the faint glimmer of her white face turned full upon him. Again he looked; she neither approached him nor drew away, and by-and-by the impassive harmlessness of her stillness seemed to breathe a breath of softness upon the black rigor of his terror. A faint spark of courage began to glimmer in his heart, and one by one the scattered forces of his will, torn asunder by the tumult of his blind terror, began to gather together and to cohere into some form.
Suddenly there came a quick flash of thought to his mind. It was plain she meant him no harm, and she was in some mysterious way connected with the strange dark life of the master: might she not give him some news of Céleste? He turned suddenly around towards the woman, and instantly as he did so, exactly timing her movements with his, she also turned. Fearing she might escape, he stepped quickly forward; instantly she began to move away; he quickened his pace, she also quickened hers; he began to run, her feet moved quickly, silently; she seemed to make no exertion, but he neither gained nor lost a foot. At last, seeing the uselessness of this crazy race through the silent and deserted streets, he finally stopped; instantly he did so, she also stopped.