you! I believe! Have faith! I'll lead you safely through the flames!"
But they ignored her, streamed past her, thrusting her aside.
He seized her arm. "Come here, Shara! The door at the back! We'll jump over and swim ashore!"
She seemed not to hear him. She thrust his hand away and went on demanding, her voice furious with mad sincerity, "Who will trust the Lord God of Hosts? Now we'll try our faith! Who will follow me?"
Since two-thirds of the auditorium was to the shoreward side of the fire, and since the wide doors to the promenade were many, most of the audience were getting safely out, save for a child crushed, a woman fainting and trampled. But toward the stage the flames, driven by the sea-wind, were beating up through the rafters. Most of the choir and the audience down front had escaped, but all who were now at the back were cut off.
He grasped Sharon's arm again. In a voice abject with fear he shouted, "For God's sake, beat it! We can't wait!"
She had an insane strength; she thrust him away so sharply that he fell against a chair, bruising his knee. Furious with pain, senseless with fear, he raged, "You can go to hell!" and galloped off, pushing aside the last of the hysterical choir. He looked back and saw her, quite alone, holding up the white wooden cross which had stood by the pulpit, marching steadily forward, a tall figure pale against the screen of flames.
All of the choir who had not got away remembered or guessed the small door at the back; so did Adelbert and Art Nichols; and all of them were jamming toward it.
That door opened inward—only it did not open, with the score of victims thrust against it. In howling panic, Elmer sprang among them, knocked them aside, struck down a girl who stood in his way, yanked open the door, and got through it . . . the last, the only one, to get through it.
He never remembered leaping, but he found himself in the surf, desperately swimming toward shore, horribly cold, horribly bound by heavy clothes. He humped out of his coat.
In the inside pocket was Lily Anderson's address, as she had given it to him before going that morning.
The sea, by night, though it was glaring now with flames from above, seemed infinite in its black sightlessness. The
