“Where are you? Why does your voice sound so far away?”
“I want to be the last whom you save, Freder! I am carrying the tiniest ones on my shoulders and arms....”
“Is the water still rising?”
“Yes.”
“Is it rising fast or slowly?”
“Fast.”
“My God, my God.... I can’t get the door loose! The machines are piled up on top of it like mountains! I must explode the ruins, Maria!”
“Very well.” Maria’s voice sounded as though she were smiling. “Meanwhile I can finish telling my story....”
Freder dashed away. He did not know where his feet should carry him. He thought vaguely of God.... “Thy will be done.... Deliver us from evil.... For Thine is the ... power....”
From the sooty black sky a frightful gleam, of the colour of spilt blood, fell upon the city, which appeared as a silhouette of tattered velvet in the painful scarcity of light. There was not a soul to be seen and yet the air throbbed under the unbearable knife-edge of shrieks of women from the vicinity of Yoshiwara, and, while the organ of the cathedral was shrilling and whistling, as though its mighty body were wounded unto death, the windows of the cathedral, lighted from within, began, phantom-like to glow.