"Mr. Joe! Oh, how did you get out?"
"I wasn't there," he breathed. "Fannie! what's happened?… None of the girls …"
"You didn't know?" she gasped.
He felt the life leaving his body; it seemed impossible.
"No …" he heard himself saying. "Tell me…."
She looked at him with dreadful eyes and spoke in a low, deadly, monotonous voice:
"The fire-escape was no good; it broke under some of the girls;… they fell;… we jammed the hall;… some of the girls jumped down the elevator shaft;… they couldn't get out … and Miss Marks, the forelady, was trying to keep us in order…. She stayed there … and I ran down the stairs, and dropped in the smoke, and crawled … but when I got to the street … I looked back … Mr. Joe … the girls were jumping from the windows…."
Joe seized the stoop-post. His body seemed torn in two; he began to reel.
"From the ninth floor," he muttered, "and couldn't get out…. And I wasn't there! Oh, God, why wasn't I killed there!"