!" said Helen, in a low voice.

Smith only nodded. Feeling her mood, he left her to speak when she was
ready, and presently she did so.

"Shall we go now?" she asked.

"Suppose we do. I want to show you, if I can--and to see myself--what
is left of the shopping and hotel and theater district. There can't be
much left."

They turned back in the way they had come, for Tremont Street above
this point was no thoroughfare. By a somewhat circuitous route at last
they reached the corner of the Common; and here, at the edge of the
great throng of curious onlookers, they paused.

"There's where I didn't sleep last night," said Smith.

The Hotel Aquitaine, such as it was, stood gauntly staring at them from
its dozens of empty windows. The building itself was intact, but every
piece of inflammable material in its contents seemed to have been wiped
out of existence as utterly as though made of tissue paper. With a
little shudder Helen turned away, and they moved onward.

For all Smith's fire-line badge, they were not permitted to enter the
patrolled district, and they could only join the throng which was
circling about the outskirts. This was not a very inspiring nor even a
very interesting thing, although the people for the most part were
oddly silent, seeming to have been numbed by the extent of the
disaster. Helen found before very long that she had seen enough.

"What a fearful crowd! I think I'd rather go where there aren't quite
so many people," she told Smith.

"All right--wait until I see what happened to Jordan's store; then
we'll go."

Five minutes later they were heading back southward in the direction of
their bridge.

"It is beyond words, isn't it?" observed Smith. "There is nothing at
all adequate that a man can say when he is confronted by such a thing
as this, and almost nothing that he can do."

"Isn't there something, though?" the girl asked. "There must be
hundreds of people homeless, without food or money or anything! Cannot
we do anything to help them?"

"No doubt," said the man. "Individually we could scarcely be of much
assistance; but I fancy that the local charity organizations or the Red
Cross would see that any contribution went where it would do the most
good."

Only a few minutes later they found where one of these institutions had
opened temporary headquarters in an old church.

"Let us go in," said Miss Maitland.

As they entered they saw that the church was filled wi