His consciousness had never faced anything so absurd, but there were times
when he felt an abrupt desire to escape her enigmatic presence and this was
one of them.
II
The lodgers were permitted by the patrol to cook their luncheon on the
stove that had been set up in the street, the orders being that they should
leave within an hour. After their smoky meal they departed, carrying
mattresses and blankets.
Gora had no intention of following them unless the flames were actually
roaring up the block between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street. She felt
quite positive that she could outrun any fire.
The last of the lodgers, at her request, shut the front door and made a
feint of locking it, an unnecessary precaution in any case as all the
windows were open; and as the sentries had been ordered to "shoot to kill,"
and had obeyed orders, looting had ceased.
CHAPTER IX
I
Gora went up to the large attic which, soon, after her mother's death, she
had furnished for her personal use. The walls were hung with a thin bluish
green material and there were several pieces of good furniture that she had
picked up at auctions. One side of the room was covered with book shelves
which Mortimer had made for her on rainy winter nights and they were filled
with the books she had found in second-hand shops. A number of them bore
the autographs of men once prosilient in the city's history but long since
gone down to disaster.
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