hreat.

By mere force of habit the lad would have gone forward and entered the
College; but on the threshold he felt how unfit he was to meet his
fellows' eyes, and he turned and hastened as fast as his trembling limbs
would carry him towards his home. The streets, to his excited
imagination, were full of spies; he fancied his every movement watched,
his footsteps counted. If he lingered they might suppose him lukewarm,
if he paused they might think him ill-affected. His speed must show his
zeal. His poor little heart beat in his breast as if it would spring
from it, but he did not stay nor look aside until the door of the house
in the Corraterie closed behind him.

Then within the house there fell upon him--alas! what a thing it is to
be a coward--a new fear. The fear was not the fear of Basterga, the
bully and cynic, whom he had known and fawned on and flattered; but of
Basterga the dark and dangerous conspirator, of whom he now heard, ready
to repay with the dagger the least attempt to penetrate his secrets! On
his entrance he had flung himself face downward on his pallet in the
little closet in which he slept; but at that thought he sprang up,
suffocated by it; already he fancied himself in the hands of the
desperadoes whom he had betrayed, already he pictured slow and lingering
deaths. But again, at the remembrance of the task laid upon him, he
flung himself prostrate, writhing, and cursing his fate, and shedding
tears of panic. He to beard Basterga! He to betray him! Impossible! Yet
if he failed, the rack and the wheel awaited him. Either way lay danger,
on either side yawned torture and death. And he was a coward. He wept
and shuddered, abandoning himself to a very paroxysm of terror.

When his door was pushed open a minute later, he did not hear the
movement; with his head buried in the pillow he did not see the face of
wonder, mingled with alarm, which viewed him from the doorway. He had
forgotten that it was Anne Royaume's custom to attend to the young men's
rooms during their absence at the afternoon lecture; and when her voice,
asking in startled accents what was amiss and if he were ill, reached
his ears, he sought, with a smothered shriek, to cover his head with the
bedclothes. He fancied that Basterga was upon him!

"What is the matter?" she repeated, advancing slowly to the side of the
bed. Then, getting no answer, she dragged the coverlet off him. "What is
it? Don't you know me?"

He sat up then, s