A thick cloud of smoke at that moment came rolling down the back stairs. It enveloped them. It went down their throats and made them cough. The man, throwing an arm over the shoulders of the slender girl who had started up after the first shock of the smoke had passed away, pushed her gently but firmly outside.
“Don’t let her come, Mary,” he called back, clearly. “I’ll get the note books—if I can.” Then he was gone—up the smoke-wreathed stairway.
Outside, the girls waited. It seemed hours. The wind, howling around the corners, whipped their skirts. There was a colder edge to it. Fire at last broke out of the back windows simultaneously with the sound of breaking glass, and huge billows of released black smoke surged out from the new outlet. Louise started forward. She never knew afterward just what she meant to do, but she sprang away from Mary’s encircling arm and ran up the little flight of steps leading to the door from which she had been so unceremoniously thrust. Afterward, when they told her, she realized what her impulsive action meant, but now she did not think. She was only conscious of some wild, vague impulse to fly to the help of the man who would even now be safe in blessed outdoors had it not been for her and her foolish woman’s whim. She had sent him to his death. What were those wretched note books—what was anything at all in comparison to his life! So she stumbled blindly up the steps. The wind had slammed the door shut. It was a cruel obstacle to keep her back. She wrenched it open. The clouds of smoke that met her, rolling out of their imprisonment like pent up steam, choked her, blinded her, beat her back. She strove impotently against it. She tried to fight it off with her hands—those little intensely feminine hands whose fortune Gordon longed to take upon himself forever and forever. They were so small and weak to fend for themselves. But small as they were, it was a good thing they did that night. Now Mary had firm hold of her and would not let her go. She struggled desperately and tried to push her off, but vainly, for Mary had twice her strength.
“Mary, I shall never forgive you—”
She did not finish her sentence, for at that moment Gordon staggered out into the air. He sat down on the bottom step as if he were drunk, but little darts of flame colored the surging smoke here and there in weird splotches and, suddenly calm now that there was something to do, Mary and Louise led him away from the doomed building where the keen wind soon blew the choking smoke from his eyes and throat.
“I’ve swallowed a ton,” he said, recovering himself quickly. “I couldn’t get them, Louise.” He did not know he called her so.
“Oh, what does it matter?” cried Louise, earnestly. “Only forgive me for sending you.”
“As I remember it, I sent myself,” said Gordon, with a humorous smile, “and, I am afraid, tumbled one little girl rather unceremoniously down the stairs. Did I hurt you?” There was a caressing cadence in the question that he could not for the life of him keep out of his voice.
“I did not even know I tumbled. How did you get back?” said Louise, tremulously.
“Who opened the door?” counter-questioned Gordon, remembering. “The wind must have blown it shut. I was blinded—I couldn’t find it—I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t have sense enough to know it was shut, but I couldn’t have helped myself anyway. I groped for it as long as I could without breathing. Then I guess I must have gone off a little, for I was sprawling on the floor of the lower hall when I felt a breath of air playing over me. Somebody must have opened the door—because I am pretty sure I had fainted or done some foolish thing.”