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never to let it master me, hoping that if I showed nothing I should conquer my own fear and theirs. I was always sick with fear and longing."

"And I—cruel coward, like all the rest—shuddered! Ah, Madeline, let me look at you while I may. It was this—this heavenly face that I feared."

Her smile at him went like a bird under a sky of tempest.

"I am glad the fire did not touch it. How horrible to have only reached you charred and shriveled! Your last thought of me could only have been a shrinking."

Before the unendurable beauty of her courage it was he who had hid his face upon her breast.

"I should not have shrunk had you come blind and featureless, my darling. Madeline! Madeline! Such beauty—such wonder—such a heart—to die for me!"

"But such suffering to end with such unimagined happiness," she said, bending her head to his; "such loneliness to end like this. Is n't this enough? Is n't everything explained, atoned for?"

The man stammered on, while her hand, strong, tender, consolatory, held his head against her breast, his rebellion, his remorse, his adoration. The roaring circle of doom about them had narrowed life to an instant. Maverley knew it to be the last. He kissed her, looking into her eyes, even his rebellion forgotten in the deep and beautiful, recognition.

Yet, "Oh, if I could have lived for you!" he heard his own voice. A shivering crash shook the room. Dense smoke filled it. He could not see her. The sky was blotted out. Stifling, he only knew that darkness was about them; that they clung together. And suddenly, in the struggle of death, hearing her gasping on his breast, a gust of air swept to them. The smoke lifted. Voices called outside, approaching. "Are you there? Are you there?" they called. The door, crumbled with fire, fell in at a blow. Maverley, holding the unconscious girl, staggered to the air, the light, the voices. The fire was out, checked on the very threshold, and hands helped him over ruins that ran with water, down ladders, in the chasms of the wrecked house. He would not let these hands take Madeline from him. He still held her when, in the hall, strange and unfamiliar with its wet and blackened walls, hurrying lights, weeping, laughter, and blanched, uplifted faces, he knew that they were to live. A great shout had arisen, a babel of thanksgiving.

"Oh, Vivian! Vivian! You are together! She went into the flames—when you alone were missing. Is it possible—is it possible that she went through them alive?" Mrs. Graham, disheveled, tears on her cheeks, her lips trembling with half- hysterical smiles, clasped them both. "Darling—wonderful girl!"

"She found me—she found me!" He knelt beside Madeline in the chair they had placed for her, a deep chair; against the high back her face, wreathed in its black hair, seemed gently sleeping; her slender body seemed to sleep. Maverley now saw how charred was the blanket that half infolded, half fell from her; saw that her naked feet were scorched. Such an anguish of fear smote upon his joy that with both hands he clutched the chair to keep himself from falling.

"Tell me—tell me that she is only fainting," he gasped.

Mrs. Graham's hand was at the girl's heart, her lips on her brow. "Only fainting, my dear Vivian but burned—badly burned."

"She never winced—all the time," he panted. "She must have been in torture."

"At such a moment she perhaps could feel nothing."

"Perhaps she only felt what I felt—only knew that we had found each other," Maverley, murmured.

He looked around. Mary Grey's, Frances Goldworthy's, faces were there, worshiping as if before a shrine. Sir Archie was there, crying, actually crying, and so funny in his exquisite pajamas, holding a reckless candle. Ted Graham, at a little distance, hid his face in his hands. Gladys knelt at her cousin's feet, a reverent hand on the charred, wet blanket.

The cruel phantom that had dogged her life was gone forever, exorcised by her act of splendid love.

"There—she is coming back—her eyelids lifted! She is alive—alive!" Constance Graham almost chanted.

Madeline opened her eyes. They had last looked at death. Now life, the murmur, the light, the touch of life, was about her. More than life. Love, everywhere love, smiled at her; and from a new world she looked up into her lover's eyes.