These avant couriers of Blake’s disgrace sped onward down the avenue. Katherine turned slowly back to Blake. He still stood in the same posture, leaning heavily upon an arm that rested on his mahogany desk. He did not speak. Nor was there anything that Katherine could say.
It was for but a moment or two that they stood in this strained silence. Then a dim outcry sounded from the centre of the town. In but a second, it seemed, this outcry had mounted to a roar.
“It is the crowd—at the Square,” said Blake, in a dry whisper.
“Yes.”
“The extra—they have seen it.”
The roar rose louder—louder. It was like the thunder of an on-rushing flood that has burst its dam. It began to separate into distinct cries, and the shuffle of running feet.
“They are coming this way,” said Blake in his same dry, mechanical tone.
There was no need for Katherine to reply. The fact was too apparent. She moved to the open window, and stood there waiting. The roar grew nearer—nearer. In but a moment, it seemed to her, the front of this human flood appeared just beyond her own house. The next moment the crowd began to pour into Blake’s wide lawn—by the hundreds—by the thousands. Many of them still carried in clenched hands crumpled copies of the Express. Here and there, luridly illuminating the wild scene, blazed a smoking torch of a member of the Blake Marching Club. And out of the mouths of this great mob, which less than a short hour before had lauded him to the stars—out of the mouths of these his erewhile idolaters, came the most fearful imprecations, the most fearful cries for vengeance.
Katherine became aware that Blake was standing behind her gazing down upon this human storm. She turned, and in his pallid face she plainly read the passionate regret that was surging through his being. His had been the chance to serve these people, and serve them with honour to himself—honour that hardly had a limit. And now he had lost them, lost them utterly and forever, and with them had lost everything!