Just then the beating of hoofs and jangling of bells in the distance announced the coming of the belated firemen; not so long belated actually, for all the emotions, heart-beats, terrors, and despairs that go to make up tragedy can be lived through in a few brief moments. In that sudden plunge from window to earth Marm Lisa seemed to die consciously. The grey world, the sad world, vanished, ‘and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-coloured,’ beamed on her darkness. She kept on falling, falling, falling, till she reached the abysmal depths of space—then she knew no more: and Mary, though prone on the earth, kept falling, falling, falling with her into so deep a swoon that she woke only to find herself on a friendly bed, with Rhoda and Lisa herself, weeping over her. * * * * * At five o’clock, Mrs. Grubb, forcibly torn from a meeting and acquainted with the afternoon’s proceedings, hurried into a lower room in the tenement house, where Mary, Rhoda, and the three children were gathered for a time. There were still a hundred people in the street, but they showed their respect by keeping four or five feet away from the windows. The twins sat on a sofa, more quiet than anything save death itself. They had been rocked to the very centre of their being, and looked like nothing so much as a couple of faded photographs of themselves. Lisa lay on a cot, sleeping restlessly; Mary looked pale and wan, and there were dark circles under her eyes. As Mrs. Grubb opened the door softly, Mary rose to meet her. ‘Have you heard all?’ she asked. ‘Yes, everything!’ faltered Mrs. Grubb with quivering lips and downcast eyelids. Mary turned towards Lisa’s bed. ‘Mrs. Grubb,’ she said, looking straight into that lady’s clear, shallow eyes, ‘I think Lisa has earned her freedom, and the right to ask a Christmas gift of you. Stand on the other side of the cot and put your hand in mine. I ask you for the last time, will you give this unfinished, imperfect life into my keeping, if I promise to be faithful to it unto the end, whatever it may be?’ I suppose that every human creature, be he ever so paltry, has his hour of effulgence, an hour when the mortal veil grows thin and the divine image stands revealed, endowing him, for a brief space at least with a kind of awful beauty and majesty.