"I think I do. The music has stopped. Harrowby has the next dance--he'd hardly think of looking for me here." She was gone! Minot stood alone on the balcony. He was dazed, blind, trembling. He had refused the girl without whom life could never be worth while! Refused her, to keep the faith! He entered upon the bright scene inside, slipped unnoticed to the elevator and, still dazed, descended to the lobby. He would walk in the moonlight until his senses were regained. Near the main door of the De la Pax he ran into Henry Trimmer. Mr. Trimmer had a newspaper in his hand. "What's the matter with the women nowadays?" he demanded indignantly. Minot tried in vain to push by him. "Seen what those London suffragettes have done now?" And Trimmer pointed to a head-line. "What have they done?" asked Minot. "Done? They put dynamite under the statue of Lord Nelson in Trafalgar Square and blew it sky-high. It fell over into the Strand----" "Good!" cried Minot wildly. "Good! I hope to hell it smashed the whole of London!" And, brushing aside the startled Trimmer, he went out into the night. It was nearly twelve o'clock when Mr. Minot, somewhat calmer of mind, returned to the De la Pax. As he stepped into the courtyard he was surprised to see a crowd gathered before the hotel. Then he noticed that from a second-floor window poured smoke and flame, and that the town fire department was wildly getting into action. He stopped--his heart almost ceased beating. That was her window! The window to which he had called her on that night that seemed so far away--last night! Breathlessly he ran forward. And he ran straight into a group just descended from the ballroom. Of that group Cynthia Meyrick was a member. For a moment they stood gazing at each other. Then the girl turned to her aunt. "My wedding dress!" she cried. "I left it lying on my bed. Oh, I can't possibly be married to-morrow if that is burned!" There was a challenge in that last sentence, and the young man for whom it was intended did not miss it. Mad with the injustice of life, he swooped down on a fireman struggling with a wabbly ladder. Snatching away the ladder, he placed it against the window from which the smoke and flame poured. He ran up it. "Here!" shouted the chief of the fire department, laying angry hands on the ladder's base. "Wot you doing? You can't go in there." "Why the devil can't I?" bellowed Minot. "Let go of that ladder!" He plunged into the room. The smoke filled his nostrils and choked him. His eyes burned. He staggered through the smoky dusk into another room. His hands met the brass bars of a bed--then closed over something soft and filmy that lay upon it. He seized the something close, and hurried back into the other room. A fireman at another window sought to turn a stream of water on him. Water--on that gown!