Two Hens and An Egg

He did not acknowledge even to himself the real cause of offence, the
proof to which she had put his courage, and the failure of that courage
to stand the test. Yet it was this, though he had himself provoked the
trial, which burned up his chivalry, as the smuggler's fire burns up the
dwarf heath upon the Landes. It was the discovery that in an heroic hour
he was no hero that gave force to his passionate gesture, and next moment
sent him storming down the beetling passage to the Rue du Roule, his
heart a maelstrom of fierce vows and fiercer menaces.

He had reached the further end of the alley and was on the point of
entering the street before he remembered that he had nowhere to go. His
lodgings were no longer his, since his landlord knew him to be a
Huguenot, and would doubtless betray him. To approach those of his faith
whom he had frequented was to expose them to danger; and, beyond the
religion, he had few acquaintances and those of the newest. Yet the
streets were impossible. He walked them on the utmost edge of peril; he
lurked in them under the blade of an impending axe. And, whether he
walked or lurked, he went at the mercy of the first comers bold enough to
take his life.

The sweat stood on his brow as he paused under the low arch of the alley-
end, tasting the bitter forlornness of the dog banned and set for death
in that sunlit city. In every window of the gable end which faced his
hiding-place he fancied an eye watching his movements; in every distant
step he heard the footfall of doom coming that way to his discovery. And
while he trembled, he had to reflect, to think, to form some plan.