"Well?" Isabel's voice rose, but she kept the anxiety out of it.
"I cannot imagine anything more delicious," went on Victoria, in the same low rich tones, "than to walk straight down those hills and into that sea of flame. I have always admired Empedocles, who cast himself into Etna. Once I saw a friend cremated, and the brief vision of that white incandescence, before the coffin shot down, seemed to me the apotheosis, the voluptuous poetry of death. I could walk down into that colossal furnace without flinching, and I believe that my last moment, as the world disappeared behind me, and those superb flames took me into their embrace, would be one of sublimest ecstasy."
Isabel caught her by the shoulders and whirled her about. "Well, you will do nothing of the sort," she cried, roughly. "In the first place you couldn't get through the lines, and in the second you are wanted at Fort Mason. Anne is going down with a basket of linen for the poor women who will be confined to-night. You are an uncommonly strong woman, and you can make use of every bit of your strength. Anne and the Leader are frail creatures, and no one else that I know of is going. They need you, and you will soon have your hands so full that your head will be purged of this nonsense. It is the fire lust—the same lust that incited a boy to-day to attempt to set fire to a house in this district that he might watch the whole city burn. I hope your egoism exploded in that climax. Here comes Anne. You must go."
"Very well," said Victoria, suddenly dazed, and with a will relaxed after the long tension of the day. "I will go."
"Where are your jewels?"
"Down in the bank."
"Well, gather up any other small things you treasure, and either conceal them about you or give them to me."
"I shall not take anything. My laces are in the chiffonnière. I do not care to enter the house again."
Isabel fetched her hat and jacket, for in spite of the fire it would be cold near the water; and a few moments later she stood on the edge of Green and Jones streets, on the other side of the hill, and watched Victoria and Anne, carrying a large clothes-basket between them, carefully making their way down to the level. They had a walk of some thirteen blocks before them, but the streets were full of people and of ruddy light.
She returned to the house and sat down on the porch, her eyes diverted from the fire for a moment by the picture of Sugihara, a pair of eye-glasses in front of his spectacles, comfortably established on a chair in the garden and reading by the lamp of the burning city. It was apparent that he had forgotten the 18th of April.