or God's sake!" he answered. We dragged the body a little way; my
hand clutched the thigh, which was hard and cold under the stuff of his
clothing. His head rolled round, and his eyes now were covered with
snow. We dragged him, and he bumped grotesquely. We had him under the
wall, near the two women, and the blood welled out and dripped in a
spreading pool at the women's feet.

"Now," said Bohun, "we've got to run for it."

"Do you know," said I, as though I were making a sudden discovery, "I
don't think I can." I leaned back against the wall and looked at the
pool of blood near the kiosk where the man had been.

"Oh, but you've got to," said Bohun, who seemed to feel no fear. "We
can't stay here all night."

"No, I know," I answered. "But the trouble is--I'm not myself." And I
was not. That _was_ the trouble. I was not John Durward at all. Some
stranger was here with a new heart, poor shrivelled limbs, an enormous
nose, a hot mouth with no eyes at all. This stranger had usurped my
clothes and he refused to move. He was tied to the wall and he would not
obey me.

Bohun looked at me. "I say, Durward, come on, it's only a step. We must
get to the Astoria."

But the picture of the Astoria did not stir me. I should have seen Nina
and Vera waiting there, and that should have at once determined me. So
it would have been had I been myself. This other man was there.... Nina
and Vera meant nothing to him at all. But I could not explain that to
Bohun. "I can't go..." I saw Bohun's eyes--I was dreadfully ashamed.
"You go on..." I muttered. I wanted to tell him that I did not think
that I could endure to feel again that awful expansion of my back and
the turning my feet into toads.

"Of course I can't leave you," he said.

And suddenly I sprang back into my own clothes again. I flung the
charlatan out and he flumped off into air.

"Come on," I said, and I ran. No bullets whizzed past us. I was ashamed
of running, and we walked quite quietly over the rest of the open space.

"Funny thing," I said, "I was damned frightened for a moment."

"It's the silence and the houses," said Bohun.

Strangely enough I remember nothing between that moment and our arrival
at the Astoria. We must have skirted the Canal, keeping in the shadow of
the wall, then crossed the Saint Isaac's Square. The next thing I can
recall is our standing, rather breathless, in the hall of the Astoria,
and the first persons I saw there were Vera and Nina,