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As she marched back upstairs she was startled. She fancied she saw a gray figure fleeing down the upper hall. She stopped. No sound.

“Heavens, I’m so wrought up! All jumpy. Shall I give Papa the paper? Oh, I’m too trembly to talk to anyone. ”

While the city went noise-mad it was a very solemn white small figure that crawled into bed. The emotion that for four years had been gathering burst into sobbing. She snuggled close, but she did not sleep. Presently: “My Red Cross work will be over soon. What can I do then? Come back to packing Papa’s bag?”

She noticed a glow on the windows of the room beside the sleeping porch. “They’re lighting up the whole city. Wonder if I oughtn’t to go down and see the fun? Wonder if Papa would like to go down? No, Mother wouldn’t let him! I want the little old brown shack. Where Stacy could come and play. Mother used to give him cookies then.

“I wish I had the nerve to set the place afire. If I were a big fighting soul I would. But I’m a worm. Am I being bad to think this way? Guess so—committed mental arson, but hadn’t the nerve— My God, the house IS afire!”

She was too frightened to move. She could smell smoke, hear a noise like the folding of stiff wrapping paper. Instantly, apparently without ever having got out of bed, she was running by a bedroom into which flames were licking from the clothes chute that led to the basement. “That dratted old furnace!” She was bursting into her parents’ room, hysterically shaking her mother.

“Get up! Get up!”

With a drowsy dignity her mother was saying, “Yes—I know—peace— get paper morning—let me sleep. ”

“It’s fire! Fire! The house is afire!”

Her mother sat up, a thick gray lock bobbing in front of one eye, and said indignantly, “How perfectly preposterous!”

Already Mr. Duke was out of bed, in smoke-prickly darkness, flapping his hands in the air. “Never could find that globe. Ought to have bedside light. Come, Mother, jump up! Theo, have you got on a warm bathrobe?” He was cool. His voice trembled, but only with nervousness.

He charged down the back hall, Theo just behind. Mrs. Duke remained at the head of the front stairs, lamenting, “Don’t leave me!”

The flames were darting hissing heads into the hall. As Theo looked they caught a box couch and ran over an old chest of drawers. The heat seemed to slap her face.

“Can’t do anything. Get out of this. Wake the servants. You take your mother down,” grumbled Mr. Duke.

Theo had her mother into a loose gown, shoes,
and a huge fleecy couch cover, and down on the front porch by the time Mr. Duke appeared driving the maids—Lizzie a gorgon in curl papers.

“Huh! Back stairs all afire,” he grunted, rubbing his chin. His fingers, rubbing then stopping, showed that for a split second he was thinking, “I need a shave. ”

“Theo! Run down to the corner. Turn in alarm. I’ll try to phone. Then save things,” he commanded.

Moved by his coolness to a new passion of love Theo flung her arm, bare as the sleeve of her bathrobe fell from it, about his seamed neck, beseeching: “Don’t save anything but the cloisonn. Let ’em burn. Won’t have to go in there, risk your life for things. Here— let me phone!”

Unreasoning she slammed the front door, bolted him out. She shouted their address and “Fire—hustle alarm!” at the telephone operator. In the largest drawing room she snatched bit after bit of cloisonn from the cabinet and dumped them into a wastebasket. Now the lower hall, at her back, was boiling with flame-tortured smoke. The noise expanded from crackling to a roar.