Joe seized the stoop-post. His body seemed torn in two; he began to reel. "From the ninth floor," he muttered, "and couldn't get out.... And I wasn't there! Oh, God, why wasn't I killed there!" III THE GOOD PEOPLE Joe broke through the fire line. He stepped like a calcium-lit figure over the wet, gleaming pavement, over the snaky hose, and among the rubber-sheathed, glistening firemen, gave one look at the ghastly heap on the sidewalk, and then became, like the host of raving relatives and friends and lovers, a man insane. It was as if the common surfaces of life--the busy days, the labor, the tools, the houses--had been drawn aside like a curtain and revealed the terrific powers that engulf humanity. In his ears sounded the hoarse cries of the firemen, the shout of the sprayed water, the crash of axes, the shatter of glass. It was too magnificent a spectacle, nature, like a Nero, using humanity to make a sublime torch in the night. And through his head pulsed and pulsed the defiant throb of the engines. Cinders fell, sticks, papers, and Joe saw fitfully the wide ring of hypnotized faces. It was as if the world had fallen into a pit, and human beings looked on each other aghast. "Get back there!" cried a burly policeman. Joe resisted his shouldering. "I'm Mr. Blaine;... it's my loft burning. I'm looking for my men...." "Go to the morgue then," snapped the policeman. "A fire line's a fire line." Joe was pushed back, and as the crowd closed about him, a soft pressure of clothing, men and women, he became aware of the fact that he had lost his head. He pulled himself together; he told himself that he, a human being, was greater than anything that could happen; that he must set his jaw and fight and brave his way through the facts. He must get to work. Myra clutched his sleeve. He turned to her a face of death, but she brought her wide eyes close to him. "Joe! Joe!" "Myra," he said, in a whisper, suddenly in that moment getting a sharp revelation of his changed life. "I may never see you again. I belong to those dead girls." He paused. "Go home ... do that for me, anyway." He had passed beyond her; there was no opposing him. "I'll go," she murmured. Then, dizzily, she reeled back, and was lost in the crowd. And then he set to work. He was strangely calm now, numb, unfeeling. There was nothing more to experience, and the overwrought brain refused any new emotions. So stupendous was the catastrophe that it left him finally calm, ready, and eagerly awake. He stepped gently through the crowd, searching, and found John Rann, the pressman. John wept like a little boy when they met. "Marty got out ... yes ... most of us did ... but Eddie Baker, Morty, and Sam Bender.... It was the cotton waste, Mr. Joe, and the cigarettes...." Joe put his arm about the rough man. "Never mind, Johnny ... Go home to the kiddies...."