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that something had struck the house above him--an enormous impact that
broke into a tinkle of falling glass, and then a stillness that ended at
last with a minute clear sound of running feet in the street below.
Those feet released him from his rigor. He turned towards the window,
and saw it starred and broken.
His heart beat high with a sense of crisis, of conclusive occurrence, of
release. And then again, his realisation of impotent confinement fell
about him like a curtain!
He could see nothing outside except that the small electric lamp
opposite was not lighted; he could hear nothing after the first
suggestion of a wide alarm. He could add nothing to interpret or enlarge
that mystery except that presently there came a reddish fluctuating
brightness in the sky towards the south-east.
This light waxed and waned. When it waned he doubted if it had ever
waxed. It had crept upon him very gradually with the darkling. It became
the predominant fact in his long night of suspense. Sometimes it seemed
to him it had the quiver one associates with dancing flames, at others
he fancied it was no more than the normal reflection of the evening
lights. It waxed and waned through the long hours, and only vanished at
last when it was submerged altogether under the rising tide of dawn. Did
it mean--? What could it mean? Almost certainly it was some sort of
fire, near or remote, but he could not even tell whether it was smoke or
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