a minute she said, 'I have no feet. I am unaware that I have any
feet. And my knees are cold. I can scarcely feel that I have knees.'

"She lay on the floor, a bundle of notebooks under her head. And we
could do nothing. The coldness and the numbness crept up past her hips
to her heart, and when it reached her heart she was dead. In fifteen
minutes, by the clock--I timed it--she was dead, there, in my own
classroom, dead. And she was a very beautiful, strong, healthy young
woman. And from the first sign of the plague to her death only fifteen
minutes elapsed. That will show you how swift was the Scarlet Death.

"Yet in those few minutes I remained with the dying woman in my
classroom, the alarm had spread over the university; and the students,
by thousands, all of them, had deserted the lecture-room and
laboratories. When I emerged, on my way to make report to the President
of the Faculty, I found the university deserted. Across the campus were
several stragglers hurrying for their homes. Two of them were running.

"President Hoag, I found in his office, all alone, looking very old and
very gray, with a multitude of wrinkles in his face that I had never
seen before. At the sight of me, he pulled himself to his feet and
tottered away to the inner office, banging the door after him and
locking it. You see, he knew I had been exposed, and he was afraid.
He shouted to me through the door to go away. I shall never forget
my feelings as I walked down the silent corridors and out across that
deserted campus. I was not afraid. I had been exposed, and I looked
upon myself as already dead. It was not that, but a feeling of awful
depression that impressed me. Everything had stopped. It was like the
end of the world to me--my world. I had been born within sight and sound
of the university. It had been my predestined career. My father had been
a professor there before me, and his father before him. For a century
and a half had this university, like a splendid machine, been running
steadily on. And now, in an instant, it had stopped. It was like seeing
the sacred flame die down on some thrice-sacred altar. I was shocked,
unutterably shocked.

"When I arrived home, my housekeeper screamed as I entered, and fled
away. And when I rang, I found the housemaid had likewise fled. I
investigated. In the kitchen I found the cook on the point of departure.
But she screamed, too, and in her haste dropped a suitcase of her
personal belongings