When the room was dark the great
shadowy forms of fear thronged unchecked about his narrow dingy bed.
Once during the night he woke. Some sound was threatening him.
It was London, coming to get him and torture him. The light in
his room was dusty, mottled, gray, lifeless. He saw his door,
half ajar, and for some moments lay motionless, watching stark
and bodiless heads thrust themselves through the opening and
withdraw with sinister alertness till he sprang up and opened
the door wide.
But he did not even stop to glance down the hall for the crowd
of phantoms that had gathered there. Some hidden manful scorn
of weakness made him sneer aloud, "Don't be a baby even if you
_are_ lonely."
His voice was deeper than usual, and he went to bed to sleep,
throwing himself down with a coarse wholesome scorn of his
nervousness.
He awoke after dawn, and for a moment curled in happy wriggles
of satisfaction over a good sleep. Then he remembered that he
was in the cold and friendless prison of England, and lay there
panting with desire to get away, to get back to America, where
he would be safe.
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