assed, for she knew that there were two exits
still open. The heavens were black. A disk like a sealing-wax wafer
indicated the position of the sun. The heat was terrific. The dynamiting
was incessant, but it did not drown the roar and the eager furious
crackle of the flames, the reverberating crash of falling walls. And the
flames were the redder for the blackness above. Cinders were falling all
over the heights, and the smoke burned the eyes.

"I shall feel like Casabianca presently, and rather ridiculous," she
reflected, "but I shall stay till the last possible moment." She went
within and packed a pillow-case with Lady Victoria's laces and other
portable objects of value and adornment, then gathered up similar
belongings of her own, tied the case firmly about the neck, stood it
where it could be snatched in flight, and returned to the porch.

The boarding-house district, several blocks of large wooden houses,
seemed literally to be swept from its foundations by those rushing
pillars of fire. The whole quarter was wiped out in an hour, and then
the fire turned its attention to the higher slopes.

It played with them for a while, darting west and returning for a morsel
at which it leaped with the agility of a living monster, went west
again; then, its appetite whetted and its greed insatiable, it started
straight for Nob Hill. The soldiers drove the faithful servants out of
the houses at the point of the bayonet. Then--in a moment--the familiar
curtains were blowing out of the windows--shrivelled to a crisp and
pursued by the red rage behind.

Sugihara did not go through the form of cooking luncheon. He knew that
his mistress would not eat, and he had as little appetite himself. He
folded his arms on the top of the fence and waited for the signal to
retreat.

Isabel went into the house repeatedly and dipped her burning face into a
basin of water, but returned quickly to her post. The fire was running
from the east along California Street hill; she saw the men who had been
cutting pictures from their frames in the Institute of Art flee to the
west, then watched the Gothic structure flare up and burn like an old
hay-stack: that monument to a millionaire whose name would be already
forgotten had it not been tacked to the gift. The fire reached
California Street, on the edge of the plateau, from the south, coming up
the west side of Taylor Street. Other great houses of the rich were so
many roaring furnaces--several