The car gave a jump. It climbed. The narrow irons received the sucking, skidding wheels, with an evil, maliciously hypocritical sound. Blood was trickling from Freder’s lips. “Don’t—don’t put the brake on—for God’s sake don’t put the brake on!” shouted the man beside him making a clutch of madness at Freder’s hand. The car, already half-slipping, shot forward again. A split in the frame-work—over, onwards. Behind them the dead frame-work crashed into space amid shrieks. They reached the other side with an impetus which was no longer to be checked. The wheels rushed into blackness and nothing. The car over-turned. Freder fell and got up again. The other remained lying. “Josaphat—!!” “Run! It’s nothing!—I swear to God it’s nothing!” a distorted smile upon the white face. “Think of Maria—and run!” And Freder raced off. Josaphat turned his head. He saw the blackness of the street flashing bright red. He heard the screams of the thousands. He thought dully, with a thrust of his fist in the air: “Shouldn’t I like to be Grot now, to be able to swear properly....” Then his head fell back into the filth of the street, and every consciousness faded but that of pain.... But Freder ran as he had never run. It was not his feet which carried him. It was his wild heart—it was his thoughts. Streets and stairs and streets and at last the cathedral square. Black in the background, the cathedral, ungodded, unlighted, the place before the broad steps swarming with human beings—and amid them, surrounded by gasps of madly despairing laughter, the howling of songs of fury, the smouldering of torches and brands, high up on the pyre.... “_Maria—!_” Freder fell on his knees as though his sinews were sawn through. “_Maria—!_” The girl whom he took to be Maria raised her head. She sought him. Her glance found him. She smiled—laughed. “Dance with me, my dearest—!” flew her voice, sharp as a flashing knife, through uproar. Freder got up. The mob recognised him. The mob lurched towards him, shrieking and yelling. “Jooooo—oh! Joh Fredersen’s son—! Joh Fredersen’s son—” They made to seize him. He dodged them wildly. He threw himself with his back against the parapet of the street. “Why do you want to kill her, you devils—? She has saved your children!” Roars of laughter answered him. Women sobbed with laughter, biting into their own hands. “Yes—yes—she has saved our children—! She saved our children with the song of the dead machines! She saved our children with the ice cold water—! High let her live—high and three time high!” “Go to the ‘House of the Sons’—! Your children are there!” “Our children are not in the ‘House of the Sons!’ There lives the brood, hatched out by money. Sons of your kind, you dog in white-silken skin!” “Listen, for God’s sake—do listen to me—!!!” “We don’t want to hear anything—!” “Maria—beloved!!!—Beloved!!!” “Don’t bawl so, son of Joh Fredersen! Or we’ll stop your mouth!” “Kill me, if you must kill—_but let her live_—!”