acle as the audience chatted and laughed.
Something in the play had made him think of Agnes Maine, though she was
not in the cast, and he had not seen her. Suddenly, without any notice
of her approach, she stood close to him, looking in his face. Her face
was paler than usual, and her eyes had a startling light in them. She
said only half a dozen low words, but they made him turn ghastly white.
What she said was:

"The house is on fire down-stairs."

He stood looking at her an instant, long enough to reflect that any
alarm would result in piling those gay people in an awful mass at the
foot of the one steep and fragile stairway. The stage entrance was
little better than an enclosed ladder, and not to be thought of.

"Go and stand at the head of the stairs," he said to her.

The bell rang for the curtain to rise, but he slipped back behind it,
and it did not go up. Instead, Jeffrey Coleman appeared before it,
bowing and smiling with exaggeration, and announced that the
continuation of the performance had been arranged as a surprise
below-stairs, and would be found even more exciting and interesting than
the part already given. The audience were requested to go below quickly,
but at the same time were cautioned against crowding, as the stair was
rather steep and temporary. As they did not start at once, he came off
the stage and led the way, going on down the stairs, and calling gayly
to the rest to follow.

Windham had got to the stairhead by this time. Agnes Maine stood there,
on one side, looking calm and contained, and he took up his position on
the other, and followed the cue given by young Coleman. He began to call
out, extolling the absorbing and thrilling character of the performance
down-stairs, with the extravagant epithets of the circus posters,
laughing all the while. He urged them on when they lingered, and
restrained them when they came too fast, addressing one and another with
jocularity, laying his hands on some and pushing them on with assumed
playfulness, keeping up the fire of raillery with desperate resistance.
When screams were heard now and then from below, he made it appear to be
only excited feminine merriment, directing attention to it, and calling
out to those yet to come:

"You hear them? Oh, yes; you'll scream, too, when you see it!"

All the time, though his faculties were sufficiently strained by the
effort he was making, he was watching Agnes Maine, who stood opposite,
doing nothing,