Page:Andreyev - The Little Angel (Knopf, 1916).djvu/196

190 I asked; "you are all bloody." With long, thin fingers he touched my cheeks, looked at them, and again fixed his gaze upon the fire.

"It burns," he repeated, without paying any attention to me. "Everything is burning."

"Do you know how to get there?" I asked, drawing back. I guessed that this was one of the many maniacs, which this ill-omened summer had produced.

"It burns!" he replied; "ho! ho! don't it burn!" he cried, laughing, and looked at me kindly, wagging his head. The hurried strokes of the tocsin suddenly stopped, and the flame crackled louder. It moved like a living thing, and with long arms, as though weary, dragged itself to the silent belfry, which now seemed near and tall, and clothed no longer in pink but in red. Above the dark loop-hole, where the bells were hung, there appeared a timid quiet tongue of fire, like the flame of a candle, and was reflected in pale rays on their metal surface. Once more the bell began to tremble, sending forth its last madly-despairing cries, and once more I flung myself along the shore, and my black shadow flung after me.

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" I cried, as though in reply to some one calling me. But the tall man was quietly seated behind me, embracing his knees, and kept singing a loud secondo to the bell: "Boom! boom! boom!"

"Are you mad?" I shouted to him. But he