convulsions she had the feeling
that some one was crying out to her in a strong voice: "Set it on fire!
Set it on fire!"

Near the chimney wall was a pile of letters and old newspapers. She fell
on her knees, and exclaimed: "Blaze! Blaze!" And then, half with horror
and half with rejoicing, she uttered a series of irrational, incoherent
sounds that were nothing more than "Hu-hu, oi-oi, hu-hu, oi-oi!"

The fire from the papers flared up at once, and she ran down the steps
with a roar and a bellow that are fearful to imagine, nerve-racking to
hear.

In a few minutes the house was a bedlam. Daniel ran up the steps,
Eleanore close behind him. The women in the lower apartments came
running up, screaming for water. Daniel and Eleanore turned back, and
dragged a big pail full of water up the stairs. The fire alarm was
turned in, the men made their way into the building, and with the help
of many hands the flames were in time extinguished.

Jordan was the first to see the lifeless Gertrude. Standing in smoke and
ashes, he sobbed and moaned, and finally fell to the floor as if struck
on the head with an axe. The men carried Gertrude's body out; her
clothes were still smoking.

Philippina had vanished.

ELEANORE

I

It was all over.

The visit of the doctor was over; and so was that of the coroner. The
investigations of the various boards, including that of the fire
department, the cross-examination, the taking of evidence, the coming to
a decision--all this was over.

The cause of the fire remained unexplained; a guilty party could not be
found. Philippina Schimmelweis had sworn that the fire had already
started when she reached the attic. It was therefore assumed that the
suicide had knocked over a lighted candle in her last moments.

The crowd of acquaintances and close friends had disappeared; this was
over too. Hardened souls expressed their conventional sympathy to
Kapellmeister Nothafft. That a man who had carried his head so high had
suddenly been obliged to lower it in humility awakened a feeling of
satisfaction. The punished evil-doer again gained public favour. Women
from the better circles of society expatiated at length on the question
whether a relation which in all justice would have to be designated as a
criminal one while the poor woman was living could be transformed into a
legal one after the lapse of a certain amount of ti