He paused, panting from some retarded terror of his climb, unfelt while he made it.
“Silvia!” he said.
She stared at him a moment.
“But you were safe, Peter,” she said. “What good was it that you came? Along that coping, did you come, all the way from your room?”
“I’m here anyhow; good, broad coping,” he said. “Now, can we do anything more? Let’s be practical: let’s think.”
For an immortal second she held him close.
“The big bell in the turret!” she said. “The rope goes through the corner of the little lobby outside my bathroom.”
“Oh, good thought,” said he. “Come and help me to pull it. We’ll talk afterwards, when we’ve done all we can.”
The sound of that reached the little town a mile away; the glare on the sky endorsed the signal. Outside on the terrace, facing the lake, and now vividly illuminated, were the other occupants from the house, busy with rescuings, and presently, shouted up to the two through the open window by which Peter had climbed in, came the news, conveyed here by telephone, that the fire-engines were on their way. A ladder was being fetched from the stable.... Had they no rope?... Then, as the conflagration spread, the electric light snapped itself out.
They had gone back, when the bell had done its work, to Silvia’s room. The angry glare from outside shone in through the window, and smoke drifted in from below the baize door that shut them off from the burning corridor. Already the fog of it obscured the glare.