Then I dragged this ladder down the gentle slant of the roof, through a maze of ghostly chimneys and dim skylights, to the kitchen wing, which was a few feet lower than the main body of the building. I skirted the chimney and stepped lightly over the eaves, calling, “Now then!” when a muffled cry, followed by a crash in the courtyard beneath, shook my heart into my mouth. I turned, gasping; and found the girl lying safe, but terrified, on the verge of the roof.
“It was a bucket,” she laughed, “and I stumbled over it—and it fell—and—and I nearly did—and I am frightened!”
And somehow I was holding her hand in mine, and my mouth was making irrelevant noises, and I was trembling. “It was close, but—look here, you must pull yourself together!” I pleaded; “because we haven’t, as it were, the time for airy badinage and repartee—just now.”
“I can’t,” she cried, hysterically. “Oh, I am so frightened! I can’t!”
“You see,” I said, with careful patience, “we must go on. I hate to seem too urgent, but we must, do you understand?” I waved my hand toward the east. “Why, look!” said I, as a thin tongue of flame leaped through the open trapdoor and flickered wickedly for a moment against the paling gray of the sky.
She saw and shuddered. “I’ll come,” she murmured, listlessly, and rose to her feet.
IV
I heaved another sigh of relief, and waving her aside from the ladder, dragged it after me to the eaves of the rear wing. As I had foreseen, this ladder reached easily to the eaves of the house behind the rear wing, and formed a passable though unsubstantial-looking bridge. I regarded it disapprovingly.
“It will only bear one,” said I; “and we will have to crawl over separately after all. Are you up to it?”
“Please go first,” said she, very quiet. And, after gazing into her face for a moment, I crept over gingerly, not caring to look down into the abyss beneath.
Then I spent a century in impotence, watching a fluffy, pink figure that swayed over a bottomless space and moved forward a hair’s breadth each year. I made no sound during this interval. In fact, I do not remember drawing a really satisfactory breath from the time I left the hotel-roof, until I lifted a soft, faint-scented, panting bundle to the roof of the Councillor von Hollwig.
V
“You are,” I cried, with conviction, “the bravest, the most—er—the bravest woman I ever knew!” I heaved a little sigh, but this time of content. “For I wonder,” said I, in my soul, “if you have any idea what a beauty you are! what a wonderful, unspeakable beauty you are! Oh, you are everything that men ever imagined in dreams that left them weeping for sheer happiness—and more! You are—you, and I have held you in my arms for a moment; and, before high heaven, to repurchase that privilege I would consent to the burning of three or four more hotels and an odd city or so to boot!” But, aloud, I only said, “We are quite safe now, you know.”
She laughed, bewilderingly. “I suppose,” said she, “the next thing is to find a trapdoor.”
But there were, so far as we could discover, no trapdoors in the roof of the Councillor von Hollwig, or in the neighbouring roofs; and, after searching three of them carefully, I suggested the propriety of waiting till dawn to be melodramatically rescued.
“You see,” I pointed out, “everybody is at the fire over yonder. But we are quite safe here, I would say, with an entire block of houses to promenade on; moreover, we have cheerful company, eligible central location in the very heart of the city, and the superb spectacle of a big fire at exactly the proper distance. Therefore,” I continued, and with severity, “you will please have the kindness to explain your motives for wandering about the corridors of a burning hotel at four o’clock in the morning.”
She sat down against a chimney and wrapped her gown about her. “I sleep very soundly,” said she, “and we did both museums and six churches and the Palais de Justice and a deaf and dumb place and the cannon-foundry today—and the cries awakened me—and I reckon Mamma lost her head.”
“And left you,” thought I, “left you—to save a canary-bird! Good Lord! And so, you are an American and a Southerner as well.”
“And you?” she asked.
“Ah—oh, yes, me!” I awoke sharply from admiration of her trailing lashes. The burning hotel was developing a splendid light wherein to see them. “I was writing—and I thought that Russian woman had a few friends to supper—and I was looking for a rhyme when I found you,” I concluded, with a fine coherence.
She looked up. It was incredible, but those heavy lashes disentangled quite easily. I was seized with a desire to see them again perform this interesting feat. “Verses?” said she, considering my slippers in a new light.
“Yes,” I admitted, guiltily—“of Helen.”
She echoed the name. It is an unusually beautiful name when properly spoken. “Why, that is my name, only we call it Elena.”
“Late of Troy Town,” said I, in explanation.
“Oh!” The lashes fell into their former state. It was hopeless this time; and manual aid would be required, inevitably. “I should think,” said my compatriot, “that live women would be more—inspiring.”
“Surely,” I assented. I drew my gown about me and sat down. “But, you see, she is alive—to me.” And I dwelt a trifle upon the last word.
“One
