We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
THRU FLAMIXG GATES
101
a cook, with a face all seared and distorted.
She was now being carried, almost a dead weight, in the arms of her partner. Once it seemed to her that that burned image was — she tried to wipe away the horrid vision along with the cold drops on her forehead — the scarred face of Toddles. Her heart leaped with a new feeling, yet sweet in* its agony. But the insistent call of frivolity in her nature was not yet quite stilled.
Suddenly she stiffened and stood still for the second time, her head bent forward, listening. "You heard it?" she asked, dazedly.
"What?" asked her partner, in amazement.
"The fire bell!"
"Why, that was the notes of the triangle running thru the wTaltz. Come, we may as well finish it — we "re near the end."
And they started out heavily again.
The woman still swayed, tho perhaps for the last time in her life, by weakness. A voice was growing stronger every minute in her singing ears, the voice of her own child, calling, calling. And a new voice in response in her heart was gaining volume and steeling her will and limbs to a deed of strength. And when the distant notes of the fire alarm floated again, above the music, the laughter, the gaiety, this time piercing her heart with the keen blade of remorse, she broke rudely from her partner and fled from the ball-room, roughly flinging aside all in her path. Thus Mrs. Norton lost her place in society for all time — and the dance went on !
But outside, running thru the cold, gas-lit streets of a winter's midnight, with hair streaming, white neck and shoulders cruelly bared to the blast, and the futile cry of a mother's breaking heart on her lips, was the woman who had turned from the