nd him
past the door of the Strand Theatre, when the throng became slacker, and
the man turned quickly about and returned the way he had come. Then
Lefevre had a glimpse of his face,--the merest passing glimpse, but it
made him pause and ask himself where he had seen it before. A dark,
foreign-looking man, with a haggard appeal in his eye: he tried to find
the place of such a figure in his memory, but for the time he tried in
vain.

Before the doctor recovered himself the man was well past, and
disappearing in the throng. He hurried after, determined to overtake
him, and to make a full and satisfying perusal of his face and figure.
He found that difficult, however, because of the man's singular style of
progression. To maintain an even pace for himself, moreover, Lefevre had
to walk very much in the roadway, the dangers of which, from passing
cabs and omnibuses, forbade his fixing his attention on the man alone.
Yet he was more and more piqued to look him in the face; for the longer
he followed him the more he was struck with the oddity of his conduct.
He had already noted how he hurried over the empty spaces of pavement
and lingered sinuously in the thronged parts; he now remarked further
that those who came into immediate contact with him (and they were
mostly young people who were to be met with at that season of the night)
glanced sharply at him, as if they had experienced some suspicious
sensation, and seemed inclined to remonstrate, till they looked in his
face.

Lefevre could not arrive at a clear front view till, by Charing Cross
Station, the man turned on the kerb to look after a handsome youth who
crossed before him, and passed over the road. Then the doctor saw the
face in the light of a street-lamp, and the sight sent the blood in a
gush from his heart. It was a dark hairless face, terribly blanched and
emaciated, as if by years of darkness and prison, with the impress of
age and death, but yet with a wistful light in the eyes, and a firm
sensuousness about the mouth that betrayed a considerable interest in
life. He turned his eyes away an instant, to bring memory and
association to bear. When he looked again the man was moving away. At
once recognition rushed upon him like a wave of light. The terribly
worn, ghastly features resolved themselves into a kind of death-mask of
Julius! The wave recoiled and smote him again. Who could the man be,
therefore, who was so like Julius, and yet was not Julius?--who c