"No, I can't, you are so personal about it. You want things so much for yourself, and you will always be disappointed, Laurence. Life isn't given us for our personal pleasure."
"You talk like a book or an old greyhead.... I don't think it's living at all to slide through life thinking about something else—not to want anything for fear you'll be disappointed! I think that's cowardly. It's better to try for things."
"Yes, but what things? I can't care much about worldly things—houses to live in and clothes to wear. I can't, Laurence."
"You seem to think that's all I care for," he said bitterly. "But you don't understand me and don't try to. What I wanted isn't houses and clothes! It was something very beautiful, to me. Something that would last for our whole life—and beyond it. But you couldn't see it. Even now you don't know what I mean."
The suffering in his voice touched her, she leaned toward him and laid her cheek to his.
"I wish I could be what you want—I wish you could be happy," she said.
"You could be, if you wanted to be!... No, I'm not happy, and I can't be contented this way, Mary, I warn you, I can't be!"
The menace of his suppressed violence left her silent and impassive. He too fell into moody silence, and so they returned to the house.
That night the whole town was roused from sleep, to see a red glare in the sky where by day hung the grey smudge over the city. The news came over the wires—Chicago was burning. A strong wind blew the smoke over the prairie, the town was enveloped in a dim haze. Trains came in, bringing refugees. Later, crowded into all sorts of vehicles, they poured in. The town opened its houses to the flood of terrified homeless people. All night blazed that red light in the sky. The wires went down, but each new arrival brought a story of more complete destruction, of whole streets of wooden houses bursting into flame at once, of brick buildings melting like wax in the furnace. By morning the city of half a million people was in ashes.