man, snapping away his cigarette. "Say, let's beat it. How 'bout lil glass beer? We can go along this platform and get out at the front, I guess."
"All right. You buying?"
The workmen moved away, dark figures between the sea and the doors that gave on the bright auditorium.
The discarded cigarette nestled against the oily rags which the workmen had dropped on the promenade, beside the flimsy walls of the tabernacle. A rag glowed round the edges, worm-like, then lit in circling flame.
Sharon was chanting: "What could be more beautiful than a tabernacle like this, set on the bosom of the rolling deep? Oh, think what the mighty tides have meant in Holy Writ! The face of the waters on which moved the spirit of Almighty God, when the earth was but a whirling and chaotic darkness! Jesus baptized in the sweet waters of Jordan! Jesus walking the waves—so could we today if we had but his faith! O dear God, strengthen thou our unbelief, give us faith like unto thine own!"
Elmer, sitting back listening, was moved as in his first adoration for her. He had become so tired of her poetizing that he almost admitted to himself that he was tired. But tonight he felt her strangeness again, and in it he was humble. He saw her straight back, shimmering in white satin, he saw her superb arms as she stretched them out to these thousands, and in hot secret pride he gloated that this beauty, beheld and worshiped of so many, belonged to him alone.
Then he noted something else.
A third of the way back, coming through one of the doors opening on the promenade, was a curl of smoke. He startled; he almost rose; he feared to rouse a panic; and sat with his brain a welter of terrified jelly till he heard the scream "Fire—fire!" and saw the whole audience and the choir leaping up, screaming—screaming—screaming—while the flimsy doorjamb was alight and the flame rose fan-like toward the rafters.
Only Sharon was in his mind—Sharon standing like an ivory column against the terror. He rushed toward her. He could hear her wailing, "Don't be afraid! Go out slowly!" She turned toward the choir, as with wild white robes they charged down from their bank of seats. She clamored, "Don't be afraid! We're in the temple of the Lord! He won't harm
