Night had fallen, and on the darkness broke and sparkled a thousand lights in tenement windows and up the shadowy streets—everywhere homes, families; men, women, and children busily living together; everywhere love. Joe glanced, his eyes filling. Then he paused.
"Look at that," he said in a changed voice.
Over against the west, a little to the north, the gray heavens were visible—a lightning seemed to run over them—a ghastly red lightning—sharply silhouetting the chimneyed housetops.
"What is it?" said Myra.
He gazed at it, transfixed.
"That's a fire … a big fire." Then suddenly his face, in the pale light of a street-lamp, became chalky white and knotted. He could barely speak. "It must be on Eighty-first or Eighty-second Street."
She spoke shrilly, clutching his arm.
"Not … the loft?"
"Oh, it can't be!" he cried, in an agony. "But come … hurry …"
They started toward Eighty-first Street up Avenue A. They walked fast; and it seemed suddenly to Joe that he had been dancing on a thin crust, and that the crust had broken and he was falling through. He turned and spoke harshly: