e alone on the sixth story. Beneath us are
only women, and if you call from the window, I can shoot you dead before
your voice can reach the street. Perhaps, though, you do not think of
saving yourself, but of ensnaring me. Bah! as if the sight of the
headsman would stop me now. Besides, I am prepared for flight. Have you
looked at this house? It is not like other houses; it is double, and the
room in which we stand has other foundations and walls from this one
behind me which I guard with my pistol. Let the deed be once done--and
the clock, as you see, gives us but one minute more--and I leap into
this other apartment, down another flight of stairs from those you came
up, and so to another door that opens upon another street. Then shout,
if you will; I am safe. As to your life, it is as much at my command as
if my bullet were already in your heart.'

"'We will see!' was the thundering reply, and with these words a rush
was made that shook the floor above our heads, and scattered bits of
plaster down upon us. Released by the action from the fearful spell
which had benumbed my limbs, I felt that I could move at last, and,
leaping to my feet, I uttered scream after scream. But they perished in
my throat, smothered by a new fear; for at this moment my arm was caught
by Cecile, and following, with horrified gaze, the pointing of her
uplifted hand, I saw the straight line of the window-ledge before me dip
and curve, and yielding to the force of her agonized strength, I let
myself be dragged across the floor, while before us, beneath us, above
us, all was one chaos of heaving and crashing timbers, which, in another
instant, broke into a thunder of confused sounds, and we beheld beneath
us a pit of darkness, death, and tumult, where, but an instant before,
were all the appurtenances of a comfortable and luxurious home.

"We were safe, for we had reached the flooring of the second house
before that of the first had completely fallen, but I could not think
of myself, narrow as my escape had been, and marvelous as was the
warning which had revealed to Cecile the only path of safety. For in the
clouded space above me, overhanging a gulf I dared not measure with my
eyes or sound with my imagination, I saw clinging by one arm to a beam
the awful figure of a man, while crouching near him on a portion of
flooring that still clung intact to the wall, I beheld another in whose
noble traits, distorted though they were by the emotions of