Page:Arthur Stringer - The Shadow.djvu/277

 him half tumbling and half rolling back into his chair, wheezing and moist with sweat. He sat there looking about him, like a sheep killer looking up from the ewe it has captured.

Then his great chest heaved and shook with hysterical sobbing. When, a little later, he heard the shaken woman's antiphonal sobs, the realization of how low he had fallen kept him from looking at her. A great shame possessed him. He stumbled out of the room. He groped his way down to the open streets, a haggard and broken man from whom life had wrung some final hope of honor.