first car that led in her sister's direction. Some of the trolley
wires were down, but no doubt others were uninjured, and the cable-cars
had always seemed to her as fixed as fate. She could no more conceive of
their system being dislocated for more than an hour at a time than of
the city burning. So far she was merely interested, and although sorry
for the unfortunate poor, felt that the fates had conspired to do the
city a service in cleaning out so objectionable a quarter. Of the
millions invested in that district she did not think, but sighed as she
thought of South Park and Rincon Hill. Still, they would have been
obliterated in the course of events and before long; and as for the fire
itself it would be stopped by the great walls of masonry on and near
Market Street. She looked eastward down the deserted streets towards the
bay, and although the vista there also was closed with flame and smoke,
the fires were far away, and the marines were fighting it.

She passed many people ascending and descending, some with pressed lips,
others arguing with a certain fettered excitement against the
pessimistic attitude. After she left the business blocks the sidewalks
again were free of debris, although she could see the ruin within. The
disreputable section of this street, known as the "Red light district,"
was crowded with women, to whose rescue or comfort no man would seem to
have come. Isabel looked at them with an irresistible curiosity, but no
sense of repulsion; she even stopped and answered their eager questions
as best she could. She was possessed with the idea that there was but
one person in San Francisco that day, no matter what the optical
delusion. She was not at all dazed, but utterly impersonal.

Even in the blazing sunshine most of these women were handsome, and
young. But all assurance was gone; when not strained and haggard from
the recent and the menacing terror, they looked indescribably forlorn.
But they were very quiet. Isabel heard but one excited cry, and
something of its thrill ran along her own nerves. "My God! The wind is
blowing from the southeast and it's blowing strong!"

Isabel glanced back. It seemed to her that the great suspended waves of
smoke, red-lined, were rolling with more energy, and they certainly were
inclining west as well as north. She wondered, with some irritation, why
the wind blew from the southeast when the first of the trades should be
roaring in from the Pacific. A strong