To go into the street and get help seemed her only resource, and she made her way down the stairs to where had been the doorway. In vain she appealed to the flying forms. Her cries were unheard in the awful din of shrieks, prayers, groans, and calls of the separated to their friends. The impression made was of a wild panic in which the frenzied thought of flight, escape, predominated.
She was about to return in something like despair, feeling that she could not leave her aunt, when she saw a tall form rushing toward her. A second later she recognized Owen Clancy leaping over the ruins of her home. With a cry, she fell into his outstretched arms, faint, trembling, yet with a sense of refuge, a thrill of exquisite joy before unknown in all her life.
"Mara, dear Mara, you are not hurt?" he asked breathlessly.
"No, oh, thank God, you have come!"
Again there was the same ominous growl, deep in the earth, which once heard could never be mistaken, never forgotten. Lifting her up Clancy carried her swiftly from beneath the shattered buildings to the middle of the street. She clung to him almost convulsively as the earth again swayed and trembled beneath them, and the awful moan of nature swelled, then died away in the distance. There was an instant of agonized, breathless suspense, then the wail of the stricken city rose again with a deeper accent of terror, a more passionate appeal to heaven, and the effort to escape to the wider spaces was renewed in a more headlong flight.
"Mara," said Clancy, "at this hour, when everything may be swept away in a moment, there is nothing left for me but you and God. Will you trust me, and let me do my very best to save you?"
"Oh, Owen, Owen, God forgive me!" She uttered the words like a despairing cry, then buried her face upon his breast.
With a dread greater than that inspired by the earthquake he thought: "Is it too late? Can she have married Bodine?" The anguish in her tone combined with her action had revealed both her love and its hopelessness. He said gently, yet firmly: "We must act now and quickly. Where is Mrs. Hunter?"
Mara had apparently become speechless from grief. Without a word she turned swiftly, and taking his hand led him toward the ruined building.
"No, stay here. It will not be safe for you to enter," and pushing her gently back he ran up the exposed stairway, into the parlor, noticing with dismay the general wreck and the danger Mara had run.