“Your father’s? Good God!” He looked past her and saw old Jessamine’s face, purple with rage and the long use of Madeira and the habit of domination. He was ordering the marine officer off his premises, and the marine officer turned to one of the city officials who was with him. The official nodded and the officer beckoned one of his soldiers and, pointing to Mr. Jessamine, spoke: “Throw that dunderhead out of here before I tumble the building on him.” And in a holiday spirit the soldiers ran the old gentleman to the curb. He almost expired at the sacrilege to his person. Patty whirled, seized her husband as with claws, and screamed: “Stop them! stop them!” The first was a bloodcurdling shriek that knifed the air. The second was the cry of a rabbit dragged from its warren by a terrier. Her anger made her faint. Her hands relaxed their clutch, her taut body grew limp and slid down through RoBards’ arms. She was a heap of cloth under a hat at his feet. He bent and gathered her up with vast difficulty. He was worn out with his toil and she gave him no help. The marine officer had to aid him. They stood her on her feet and RoBards thrust one arm under her knees and another about her waist. When he rose, her hat fell back, dangling by the ribbons from her throat. Her face hung down white and lifeless as a broken doll’s. He staggered under the weight of her against his weary lungs and staggered yet more under the burden of the sweetness of her round body and her delicate limbs. It was hard to endure that so darling a thing should have looked at him with such hate. He was about to lay her upon one of the counters and revive her from her swoon, when he saw that the marine officer was knocking a flint in the tinder-box and kneeling to set the burning rag to the powdered silk. Out of the dark shop RoBards hustled with Patty. Her feet caught across the door and he had to fall back and sidle through with her. In the street the world was red again and he fled stumblingly across the rough cobbles and up the next alley. The ground quaked and reeled under him and he heard a roar as of one of the Miltonic cannons the angels fought with in heaven. He glanced over his shoulder and, through the ravine of the alley, saw the Jessamine warehouse rise, turn to a quivering black jelly, and splash back in a heap, releasing to the view a larger crimson sky. When the reverberations had dulled, the air throbbed with a hoarse weeping. Against the wall an ancient man leaned his head in the crook of his elbow, and cried like a birched schoolboy. It was old Jessamine. “Two hundred thousand dollars gone!” he was moaning. “And the insurance worthless.” Patty came back to life with a sigh and lifting her head as from a pillow, peered up into RoBards’ face sleepily. When she realized who held her, she kicked and struggled, muttering: “Let me down, you fiend! Let me down, I say!”