up and down the room, wringing his hands, a middle-aged
man was giving expression to the most terrible irony and cowardice,
without reference to his listeners.

I ran my eye over the huddled groups of frightened women. The one I
sought was not there. I flew through the groaning figures on the
stairway up to her chamber. I knocked loudly, and called her by name
passionately. Then I listened. I heard nothing but the dull sounds of
the human tumult that came through the open casement, and the sighing
tones of the telegraph wires as the steady draft from the east swept
through them. I shook the door, and abjured her to come to me. Then in
my madness I burst it in. She was on her knees at the bed, with her
hands on her ears, and her head buried in the bedclothes. I fell down on
my knees beside her, and put my arm around her. "Kate," I said, "we will
die together. Look up. Love at least is eternal." She was cold. I caught
her head between my hands, and turned her beautiful face toward me. My
God, she was dead! Dead, with her staring eyes full of terror, and her
beautiful mouth set in hard and ghastly lines. Then it was that I felt
rise up within me for the first time the rebellious bitterness of the
natural man. Need I tell you that at such moments man is little better
than an animal, save in his free agency that enables him to defy? I
passed hours there--moaning, cursing, bewailing. When at last the force
of the paroxysm had expended itself, I shook my fist in the face of
heaven, with the obduracy of Pagan Greek, and said: "Come on now, you
envious Fates, and do your worst speedily, or I will be too quick for
you!"

Judge Brisbane found me there, raving.

"Do you know?" I asked.

"Yes," he answered, "and I am grateful. She is spared much that we must
endure."

"And so," I said, "life, love, and the vaunted future of the race end in
mockery."

"It seems so," he replied. "But we cannot be sure. Come with me."

We ascended to the roof. The spectacle that greeted us was
indescribable. The tops of all the houses were black with people, who
were staring mutely and with childish terror into the West. The steady,
subdued organ tone of the rushing atmosphere could now be heard above
all else. We stood there in silence a few moments, and then I said,
"It's terrible. What do you suppose is taking place?"

"I suppose," replied the Judge, "that we are losing our atmosphere.
Reeling it off, so to speak, slowly, as we revolve. O