Page:Rowland--The closing net.djvu/141

Rh The strain was beginning to tell, too, and I knew that this would get steadily worse. A fight in the open is all right; but to feel that you are being watched and dogged and shadowed by a big human octopus, to be struck down at the first unguarded moment, is pretty awful. I don't pretend to any more nerve than the average man who has lived the most of his active life in the Under-World. Besides, I never was a killer.

Out I went through St. Germain to avoid the pavée, and turned off for Pontoise, taking a good road gait but not pushing her any. It was a beautiful day in the early summer, and as I filled my lungs with the sweet perfume of the forest it struck me as being mighty rough that I should be crowded out just when life seemed to be opening up all anew and full of promise. If only they could have left me in peace. I thought of Edith's sweet face and wondered what she would say if she knew how things had turned out. At any rate, living or dead, she would know that I had stuck to my word and taken the consequences without flinching, and this thought did me a lot of good. After all, my life had been lived at the expense of Society, and Society had a right to collect her debt before taking me back. A curious thing, this life. No act ever seems to go for nothing, good or bad. I began to get mighty thoughtful as I rolled along through that splendid old forest of St. Germain. A deep sadness settled on me. After all, I thought, what's the use of trying to escape your destiny. Very likely God made thieves and murderers to prey on the rest of mankind just as he made wolves and panthers to prey