Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/189

180 pause. Hard upon the word a tracery of flame showed through the flimsy representation of a sylvan glade, as though the cry had been the cue for its appearance; and at the sight and the sound of its ominous crackle the audience rose and swept back under a single maddened impulse.

There could, from the first moment, be only one ending in such a death-trap to a panic so sudden and complete. Those who escaped, escaped in the three minutes of grace. The perfumed stoicism of the aristocracy and the steady common sense of the bourgeoisie shared a kindred fate, and before each narrow door it was a horrid swarm of frenzied animals, robbed of every resourceful instinct and outside the boundaries even of humanity, that fought murderously for life. Even when the doors could be opened a solid phalanx of dead and living wedged the passage beyond the hope of extrication. Some mercifully lost consciousness and never woke; others, less happy, endured the various forms of madness, and by their excesses lent an added horror to the short and lurid scene.

In all the house there were two persons only who did not join in the wild stampede. From his place Hautepierre watched the earlier part of the wholesale tragedy with emotion indeed but almost in outward calmness. He saw that the situation was desperate, but he already knew that death was very near to him. Despite the pose, during the past few hours he had thought continually of the prospect, and he had come to regard the inevitable at least without despair. Now death took another and a sharper form; that was all.

It was thus that he became aware of the other who had remained. On the stage was a solitary shepherdess, stayed by a very different reason. It had been the part of this one nymph to be bound to a tree until released by