air very brave and gay, but in the end dwindled
irresolutely, discouraged, disheartened, fading sadly away, vanishing
under the night, like illusions disappearing at the first touch of the
outside world. As Vandover leaned from his window, looking out into the
night with eyes that saw nothing, the college slogan rose again from the
great crowd of students who still continued to hold the streets.

"Rah, rah, rah! Rah, rah, rah!"

He turned back into the room, groping among the bottles on his washstand
for his bromide of potassium. As he poured out the required dose into
the teaspoon his hand twitched again sharply, flirting the medicine
over his bared neck and chest, exposed by the bathrobe which he had left
open at the throat. It was cold, and he shivered a bit as he wiped it
dry with the back of his hand.

He knew very well that his nervous attack was coming on again. As he set
down the bottle upon the washstand he muttered to himself, "Now I'm
going to have a night of it." He began to walk the floor again with
great strides, fighting with all his pitiful, shattered mind against the
increasing hysteria, trying to keep out of his brain the strange
hallucination that assailed it from time to time, the hallucination of a
thing four-footed, a thing that sulked and snarled. The hotel grew
quiet; a watchman went down the hall turning out each alternate gas jet.
Just outside of the door was a burner in a red globe, fixed at a stair
landing to show the exit in case of fire. This burned all night and it
streamed through the transom of Vandover's room, splotching the ceiling
with a great square of red light. Vandover was in a torment, overcome
now by that same fear with which he had at last become so familiar, the
unreasoning terror of something unknown. He uttered an exclamation, a
suppressed cry of despair, of misery, and then suddenly checked himself,
astonished, seized with the fancy that his cry was not human, was not of
himself, but of something four-footed, the snarl of some exasperated
brute. He paused abruptly in his walk, listening, for what he did not
know. The silence of the great city spread itself around him, like the
still waters of some vast lagoon. Through the silence he heard the noise
of the throng of college youths. They were returning, doubling upon
their line of march. A long puff of tepid air breathing through the open
window brought to his ears the distant joyous sound of their slogan:

"Rah, rah, rah