rearranging it, and stroking and smoothing the singed irregular wisps of
hair that were left as though she loved them. "I'm frightfully sorry--I
didn't know you were so fond of my hair."

"Come, we'll go to the house," was all Anna said, stumbling on to her
feet and putting her arm round Letty. And they clung to each other so
close that they could hardly walk.

"We are going indoors a moment," called the princess, who was very pale,
to Axel as they passed the engines.

He smiled across at her, and lifted his hat.

"I never saw anyone quite so composed," she observed to Anna, trying to
turn her attention to other things. "Your man Dellwig, who has nothing
to do with it all, is displaying the kind of behaviour the people expect
on these occasions. I am sure that Axel has puzzled a great many people
to-night."

Anna did not answer. She was thinking only of Letty. What a slender
thread of chance had saved her from death, from a dreadful death, the
little Letty who was under her care, for whom she was responsible, and
whom she had quite forgotten in her stupid interest in Axel Lohm's
affairs. Woman-like, she felt very angry with Axel. What did it matter
to her whether his place burnt to ashes or not? But Letty mattered to
her, her own little niece, poor solitary Letty, practically motherless,
so ugly, and so full of good intentions. She had scolded her so much
about Klutz; wretched Klutz, it was entirely his fault that Letty had
been so silly, and yet only Letty had had the scoldings. Anna held her
closer. In the light of that narrow escape how trivial, how indifferent,
all this folly of love-talk and messages and anger seemed. For a short
space she touched the realities, she saw life and death in their true
proportion; and even while she was looking at them with clear and
startled vision they were blurred again into indistinctness, they faded
away and were gone--rubbed out by the inevitable details of the passing
hour.

"I thought as much," said the princess, as they drew near the house.
"All the doors wide open and the place deserted." And Anna came back
with a start from the reality to the well-known dream of daily life, and
immediately felt as though that other flash had been the dream and only
this were real.

The hall was in darkness, but there was light shining through the chinks
of a door, and they groped their way towards it. The house was as quiet
as death. They could hear the distant shouts of the men cu