The house was very quiet.  The leaves of a catalpa, across the roadway, hung motionless.  Somebody yawned on the veranda below.  I threw away my half-finished cigar, and closed my eyes.  I think I had not lost consciousness for more than a few seconds before I was awakened by the shaking and thrilling of the whole building.  As I staggered to my feet, I saw the four pictures hanging against the wall swing outwardly from it on their cords, and my door swing back against the wall.  At the same moment, acted upon by the same potential impulse, the door of the end room in the hall, opposite the stairs, also swung open.  In that brief moment I had a glimpse of the interior of the room, of two figures, a man and a woman, the latter clinging to her companion in abject terror.  It was only for an instant, for a second thrill passed through the house, the pictures clattered back against the wall, the door of the end room closed violently on its strange revelation, and my own door swung back also.  Apprehensive of what might happen, I sprang toward it, but only to arrest it an inch or two before it should shut, when, as my experience had taught me, it might stick by the subsidence of the walls.  But it did stick ajar, and remained firmly fixed in that position.  From the clattering of the knob of the other door, and the sound of hurried voices behind it, I knew that the same thing had happened there when that door had fully closed.

I was familiar enough with earthquakes to know that, with the second shock or subsidence of the earth, the immediate danger was passed, and so I was able to note more clearly what else was passing.  There was the usual sudden stampede of hurrying feet, the solitary oath and scream, the half-hysterical laughter, and silence.  Then the tumult was reawakened to the sound of high voices, talking all together, or the impatient calling of absentees in halls and corridors.  Then I heard the quick swish of female skirts on the staircase, and one of the fair guests knocked impatiently at the door of the end room, still immovably fixed.  At the first knock there was a sudden cessation of the hurried whisperings and turning of the doorknob.

“Mrs. Saltillo, are you there?  Are you frightened?” she called.

“Mrs. Saltillo”!  It was she, then, who was in the room!  I drew nearer my door, which was still fixed ajar.  Presently a voice,—­Mrs. Saltillo’s voice,—­with a constrained laugh in it, came from behind the door:  “Not a bit.  I’ll come down in a minute.”

“Do,” persisted the would-be intruder.  “It’s all over now, but we’re all going out into the garden; it’s safer.”

“All right,” answered Mrs. Saltillo.  “Don’t wait, dear.  I’ll follow.  Run away, now.”