She kept asking Miss Ottley in French to explain what had happened. Nobody seemed aware that the house was on fire. They had all been merely alarmed by the noises they had heard. Miss Ottley in the middle of it all began to weep. She was thoroughly upset and ill, and I perceived at once that she was on the verge of a mental and physical collapse. In the circumstances, I judged it best to remain a silent onlooker of events and not to take any action unless there arose a real necessity. It was plain that I was still invisible. And as for the house being on fire, I deemed it utterly desirable that it should burn down to the last shaving and thus fittingly entomb in its destruction the ghastly tragedy of the laboratory. The issue tallied largely with my wishes. The fire was seen first from the street. There followed a veritable pandemonium. The coloured servants fled like cowards for their lives, and in an incredibly short space of time the house was in the hands of firemen and police. Miss Ottley was taken by the nurse out into the street and there questioned by a sergeant. But she was quite unable to answer his insistent queries satisfactorily. All she could say was that she had been a long time ill. She had fainted in her room that afternoon, and Dr. Belleville or someone had carried her to the laboratory. When she woke up she had heard a frightful noise. She supposed it was one of the Doctor's experiments. She thought she had fainted again, but she remembered nothing more until she found herself with her dress on fire at the foot of the staircase. She could not explain how she got there. The sergeant was civil enough to her, but the fool, in his fussy officiousness, overlooked her weak condition, and the girl broke down and utterly collapsed before he realised his quite unnecessary cruelty. The worst of it was that the French nurse had disappeared during the colloquy. There was, therefore, no woman at hand to attend to my poor sweetheart. Fortunately, however, a physician appeared opportunely on the scene, and at his direction she was immediately conveyed to a hospital. After she had gone, I did not tarry very long. Choosing a place where the cordoned crowd was thinnest, I slipped back through the park railings, over which I climbed and dropped into the park, feeling the weight of my invisibility acutely. From this vantage point I watched the conflagration for a while. The house was manifestly doomed. Indeed, the efforts of the firemen were entirely directed to save adjoining buildings. A hundred jets of water played upon the walls of these in thin continuous streams. Men about me were talking the matter over as if it personally appealed to them. They mostly viewed it with a sort of half-secret satisfaction. The misfortunes of millionaires do not excite much sympathy in the hearts of the mob.