was not so dark in the courtyard as it
had been in the driveway, and, unless she were strangely mistaken that
form out there was Danglar's. She watched him as he headed toward a
small building that loomed up like a black, irregular shadow across
the courtyard, and which was Shluker's shop--watched him in a tense,
fascinated way. She was in time, then--only--only somehow now her limbs
seemed to have become weak and powerless. It seemed suddenly as though
she craved with all her soul the protecting shadows of the tenement,
and that every impulse bade her cling there, flattened against the wall,
until she could make her escape. She was afraid now; she shrank from the
next step. It wasn't illogical. She had set out with a purpose in
view, and she had not been blind to the danger that she ran, but the
prospective and mental encounter with danger did not hold the terror
that the tangible, concrete and actual presence of that peril did--and
that was Danglar there.

She felt her face whiten, and she felt the tremor of her lips, tightly
as they were drawn together. Yes, she was afraid, afraid in every fiber
of her being, but there was a difference, wasn't there, between being
afraid and being a coward? Her small, gloved hands clenched, her lips
parted slightly. She laughed a little now, low, without mirth. Upon what
she did or did not do, upon the margin between fear and cowardice as
applied to herself, there hung a man's life. Danglar was disappearing
around the side of Shluker's shop. She moved out from the wall, and
swiftly, silently, crossed the courtyard, gained the side of the junk
shop in turn, skirted it, and halted, listening, peering around her,
as she reached the rear corner of the building. A door closed somewhere
ahead of her; from above, upstairs, faint streaks of light showed
through the interstices of a shuttered window.

She crept forward now, hugging the rear wall, reached a door-the one,
obviously, through which Danglar had disappeared, and which she
had heard as it was closed--tried the door, found it unlocked, and,
noiselessly, inch by inch, pushed it open; and a moment later, stepping
over the threshold, she closed it softly behind her. A dull glow of
light, emanating evidently from an open door above, disclosed the upper
portion of a stairway over on her left, but apart from that the place
was in blackness, and save that she knew, of course, she was in the rear
of Shluker's junk shop, she could form no i