Where did the voice come from? Nora and Jessica were so startled they could only clutch each other and wonder, while Grace whispered:
"Don't move from your seats."
"Grace, was that your voice?" whispered David, who had joined the girls during the death-bed scene.
But Grace made no reply. She only put her finger to her lips as she held his arm with a detaining hand.
There was a panic in the house. The audience rushed for the doors while the actors leaped over the footlights in their mad scramble to escape. Several women's voices took up the cry of fire and the place was in wild confusion. Evidently the man who managed the lights had been too frightened to turn them on again, for the theater still remained in semi-darkness.
The four young people did not move while the audience was crowding out of the aisles.
"We might as well be suffocated as crushed," observed David. "It's a much more comfortable death, and besides I can't smell any smoke."
Grace smiled but was silent.
"I'm here at last," announced Anne's well-known voice behind them.
And there she was, still in her ragged stage dress, carrying her hat and coat on her arm.