Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/190

 into, weakened by the fire at the stairway head, it could not stand the strain—he felt it giving away, and with all his strength he flung his weight forward. For an instant he hung there in the balance; and then, with the bannister crashing down around him, he landed on hands and knees on the hall floor. He was on his feet in a second—something white through the smoke caught his eye ahead of him down the passage at the front of the house.

In another moment he had reached her and was on his knees beside her. Half across the threshold of a door she lay, motionless, unconscious, her face bloodless white, one hand out-flung, and tightly clasped in it a tiny ivory miniature—her mother's picture. She had rushed from her own room across the hall, probably, just as the fire burst through from the rear, had tried to make for the window of this other room where it was almost free from smoke, and had been overcome upon its threshold.

"Janet! Janet!"—his words were a strong man's sobs now, as he snatched her from the floor and lifted her in his arms.

The golden hair brushed his cheek. It thrilled him, whipped his veins into fiery streams, dominated him, overpowered him, mastered him. He knew now, knew for all time to come, forever more he knew—he loved her. He swept her closer, tighter to him; and then, with reverently lowered head, as he rushed forward toward the window, his lips pressed the fair, white brow in a long, lingering kiss—the hungry, hopeless, silent cry of his heart, his soul, his being. No; she was not dead. Presently he would give her back to her own