Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/189

 and mouth—and leaped grimly forward. Above, angry red, a sheet of flame spurted across the head of the stairway—the upper rear of the house was a seething furnace—and somewhere, somewhere above him she—he moaned like a man in delirium, his head and lungs seemed to be bursting. He had not thought that the fire had gained such headway within—was he to be forced back, unable to gain the hall above that ran to the front of the house where she must be? Would he, after all, be forced back to make the attempt all over again by a ladder through the window on the side still untouched by the fire? He had thought of that in the first place, but where every second counted he had not dared to risk the time it would have taken to bring a ladder around from the rear. Where every second counted—as the thought seared again into his brain, his heart seemed to stop its beat.

"Janet!"—her name burst from his lips spontaneously in a fierce, anguished cry; and, as though it were the magic word that rent asunder the flood-gates of his soul, there surged upon him a mighty wave of passion—all that was primal, elemental in him rose in liberation as to some wild, stupendous revelry, full of exquisite torture, of infinite joy, and all of happiness, all of sorrow that a world of life could ever know.

The head of the stairs was impassable—across it, in a very wall now, was that fiery barrier. But there was another way. He was far enough up now, and he measured the distance to the top of the hall bannister with a quick glance, dropped his jacket—and sprang. There was a split, a crack of rending woodwork as his hands closed around and gripped the railing—eaten