The appearance of Fong, coming down the steps carrying an armchair, diverted her. "He's got out alive. Don't you go back into that house, Fong. It isn't safe, it'll fall at any moment. There's going to be more of this--it isn't finished." Fong, without answering, set the chair down beside her, taking from its seat a cloak and an eiderdown coverlet. He and Lorry wrapped her in the cloak and disposing her in the chair tucked the coverlet round her knees. Thus installed, her ancient head decorated with crimping pins, her old gnarled hands shaking in her lap, she sank against the back murmuring, "Oh, what a morning, what a morning!" A lurid light glowed above the trees and sent a coppery luster down the street. The sun had swum up over the housetops and the people in the roadway; Lorry, on the lawn, gazed at it aghast, a crowning amazement. It hung, a scarlet ball, enormously large, like a red seal of vengeance suspended in the heavens. "Look at the sun, look at the sun!" came in thin cries from the throng. It shone through a glassy, brownish film in which its rays were absorbed, leaving it a sharply defined, magnified sphere. Fong, coming down the steps with another chair, eyed it curiously. "Awful big sun," he commented. "It's shining through something," said Lorry. "It must be dust." Fong put the chair beside Aunt Ellen's, pressing it into steadiness on the lawn's yielding turf. "Maybe smoke," he answered. "After earthquake always fire." Aunt Ellen gave forth a despairing groan. "Anything _more_!" "Don't be afraid," Lorry comforted. "We've the best department in the country. If there should be any fires they'll be put out." Aunt Ellen took courage from this confident statement and, life running stronger in her, sat up and felt at her head. "Oh, I've got my pins in, but how was I to take them out? Lorry, _do_ sit down. You're as white as a sheet." "I'm all right, Aunt Ellen. Don't bother about me. I'm going into the house." The old lady shrieked and clutched at her skirt. "No--no, I won't allow it." Then as the girl drew her dress away, "Lorry Alston, do you want my death on your head as well as your own? If you want anything let Fong get it. He seems willing and anxious to risk his life." "Fong can't do this. I'm going to telephone; I want to find out if Chrystie's all right. I'm sorry but I must go," and she ran to the house. From the first clear moment after the shock her thoughts had gone to Chrystie. As she had tucked Aunt Ellen into the chair, she had been thinking what she could do and the best her shaken brain had to offer was a series of telephone messages to those friends where Chrystie might have gone. The anxiety of last night was as nothing to the anguish of this unprecedented hour.