And while he looked, paralyzed with dread, at the father who had resumed his cautious advance--blind like fate, persistent like destiny--he listened with greedy eagerness to the heart of the daughter beating light, rapid, and steady against his head.
He was in the grip of horrible fear; of a fear whose cold hand robs its victim of all will and of all power; of all wish to escape, to resist, or to move; which destroys hope and despair alike, and holds the empty and useless carcass as if in a vise under the coming stroke.

It was not the fear of death--he had faced danger before--it was not even the fear of that particular form of death.

It was not the fear of the end, for he knew that the end would not come then.

A movement, a leap, a shout would save him from the feeble hand of the blind old man, from that hand that even now was, with cautious sweeps along the ground, feeling for his body in the darkness.

It was the unreasoning fear of this glimpse into the unknown things, into those motives, impulses, desires he had ignored, but that had lived in the breasts of despised men, close by his side, and were revealed to him for a second, to be hidden again behind the black mists of doubt and deception.