“We are too late,” he said. “Sanson has got his men together. We shall have to storm the Wing from below. Half our men have joined in that mad attack on Lembken, who is helpless, whereas Sanson—” He shrugged his shoulders in despair. Then David turned to me. “You must bring them back, Arnold,” he said. “They will obey and follow you. Leave Esther—” He saw the look on my face, and began to plead with me. “It is your duty, Arnold,” he cried. “All will be lost unless you can draw off our men from the Palace. I will protect her with my life.” He bent down and looked into Esther’s face, and an expression of amazement came upon his own. It occurred to me afterward that he had never believed that Esther really lived. But at the time only the thought of this flickered through my brain, and it yielded to more urgent ones. “They will follow you!” cried David. I hesitated no longer. I placed Esther’s unconscious body in Elizabeth’s arms, and, without stopping to glance at her, lest it sap my resolution, I plunged into the shaft and began to scramble upward. Somehow I reached the summit. I fell upon my hands within the Palace. The mob was swarming everywhere, in every room, it seemed, and through the gardens. I ran out under the dome. The winter sun shone through a gray fog, a blood-red ball of fire. The yelling mob swept through the groves. Its fury was unleashed, and the remembered wrongs of years impelled it to universal destruction. I saw at the first glance that these men were beyond the power of argument. With their bare hands they tore up palms and tossed them down into the courts through jagged holes in the transparent walls. They tore the panes out of their settings, twisting the thin, un-splintering glass until it writhed everywhere, coiled, crystal snakes among the uprooted flowers. They spared nothing. The yellow orange spheres gleamed in the rank grass. The scent of orange flowers was choking. I ran among them, calling on them to follow me back, for the sake of our cause, to join their comrades, hard pressed by Sanson. Most of them did not seem to hear me; some raised their heads from their work, stared at me for a moment, and resumed their wild task of ruin. It came to me then that I was unknown to them. Not one in a hundred of these men had seen my face more than a moment or two upon the altar platform.