And abruptly the faces all
about him leapt out of the black, visible, ghastly-white and astonished,
terrified, perspiring, in a livid glare. One face, a young man's, was
very near to him, not twenty inches away. At the time it was but a
passing incident of no emotional value, but afterwards it came back to
him in his dreams. For this young man, wedged upright in the crowd for a
time, had been shot and was already dead.
A fourth white star must have been lit by the man on the cable. Its
light came glaring in through vast windows and arches and showed Graham
that he was now one of a dense mass of flying black figures pressed back
across the lower area of the great theatre. This time the picture was
livid and fragmentary, slashed and barred with black shadows. He saw
that quite near to him the red guards were fighting their way through
the people. He could not tell whether they saw him. He looked for
Lincoln and his guards. He saw Lincoln near the stage of the theatre
surrounded in a crowd of black-badged revolutionaries, lifted up and
staring to and fro as if seeking him. Graham perceived that he himself
was near the opposite edge of the crowd, that behind him, separated by a
barrier, sloped the now vacant seats of the theatre. A sudden idea came
to him, and he began fighting his way towards the barrier. As he reached
it the glare came to an end.
In a moment he had thrown off the great cloak that not only impeded his
movements but made him conspicuous, and had slipped it from his
shoulders.
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