Both rushed towards the curtain, at once, but Leslie in advance--both with the impression that some dreadful catastrophe connected with the lightning must have occurred. But just as Leslie laid his hand upon the curtain to draw it aside, it was dashed open from within, and Josephine Harris literally flung herself through it, still shrieking and in that deadly mortal terror which threatens the reason. She seemed about to fall, and Tom Leslie stretched out his arms to receive her. She half fell into them, then rolled, nearer than described any other motion, into those of Bell Crawford; and almost before Leslie could quite realize what had occurred, she lay with her head in Bell's lap, the extremity of her terror over, uttering no word, but sobbing and moaning like a little child that had been too severely dealt with and broken down under the blow. Tom Leslie's hand, it has been said, was on the curtain, to remove it. He released it for the instant, to look after the welfare of the frightened girl; but when he saw her lying in Bell's lap another feeling became paramount even to his anxiety for her safety, and he grasped the curtain again and dashed through into the inner room. As he had expected, the red woman of the Rue la Reynie Ogniard stood before him, presenting the same magnificent outline of face and the same ghastly redness of complexion that she had shown at such a distance of time and place. In her hand was a white wand, glittering like silver, with some bright and flashing colorless stone at the end. Her dress, as he then remembered, had been red when he saw her in Paris, and no relief to her ghastly color had been shown, except in the mass of dark hair sweeping down her shoulders. Now her tall and stately form was wrapped in black, against which her cloud of dark hair was unnoticed. Leslie had not observed, at any time during the absence of either of the two girls, any odor of smoke or any appearance of it creeping out from the curtain into the room; but now, as he looked, he saw white wreaths of vapor circling near the ceiling and fading away there; and he realized at once, with the memory of the past in mind, what had been the form in which the images were presented, producing so startling an effect on both.