“Oh, it’s a good book-name, but for real life it’s too—­ delicate.”  Eliza felt with vexation that her face was burning.  She was sure he was laughing at her.

“Can’t I read the manuscript?” he pleaded.

“Heavens!  No!  I—­” She changed the subject abruptly.  “I’ve left word to be called the minute the ice starts to go out.  I want to see the last act of the drama.”

When O’Neil left her he was vaguely perplexed, for something in her bearing did not seem quite natural.  He was forlorn, too, at the prospect of losing her.  He wondered if fathers suffered thus, or if a lover could be more deeply pained at a parting than he.  Somehow he seemed to share the feelings of both.

XXVII

HOW A DREAM CAME TRUE

Early on the following morning Eliza was awakened by a sound of shouting outside her window.  She lay half dazed for a moment or two, until the significance of the uproar made itself apparent; then she leaped from her bed.

Men were crying: 

“There she goes!”

“She’s going out!”

Doors were slamming, there was the rustle and scuff of flying feet, and in the next room Dan was evidently throwing himself into his clothes like a fireman.  Eliza called to him, but he did not answer; and the next moment he had fled, upsetting some article of furniture in his haste.  Drawing her curtains aside, the girl saw in the brightening dawn men pouring down the street, dressing as they went.  They seemed half demented; they were yelling at one another, but she could not gather from their words whether it was the ice which was moving or—­the bridge.  The bridge!  That possibility set her to dressing with tremulous fingers, her heart sick with fear.  She called to Natalie, but scarcely recognized her own voice.

“I—­don’t know,” came the muffled reply to her question.  “It sounds like something—­terrible.  I’m afraid Dan will fall in or—­ get hurt.”  The confusion in the street was growing.  “Eliza!” Natalie’s voice was tragic.

“What is it, dear?”

“H—­help me, quick!”

“How?”

“I can’t find my other shoe.”

But Eliza was sitting on the floor, lacing up her own stout boots, and an instant later she followed her brother, pursued by a wail of dismay from the adjoining chamber.  Through the chill morning light she hurried, asking many questions, but receiving no coherent reply from the racing men; then after endless moments of suspense she saw with relief that the massive superstructure of the bridge was still standing.  Above the shouting she heard another sound, indistinct but insistent.  It filled the air with a whispering movement; it was punctuated at intervals by a dull rumbling and grinding.  She found the river-bank black with forms, but like a cat she wormed her way through the crowd until the whole panorama lay before her.