There ensued a panic that baffled description. One impulse moved the whole excited, shrieking throng—they surged forward madly toward the doors and windows, bent on escape.

They were like maniacs for the time. The weak fell down beneath the feet of the strong, and were heedlessly trampled, while groans and cries, sometimes mixed with curses, divided the shuddering air.

Violet Earle had shrieked and fainted in the arms of her half-maddened brother. There was not one to avert the awful fate of her who a single moment before had held every heart enchained by the power of her beauty and genius.

Yes, there was one—one only, it seemed. In an instant after the terrible flames had wrapped their fiery tongues around the slender form of the prima donna a man sprang over the footlights upon the stage at one rapid bound from the parquette floor.

He had caught up a heavy camel's-hair shawl, dropped by a lady in her hurried flight. Rushing forward, utterly heedless of the advancing flames that scorched his face and his hair, he threw the heavy shawl over the blazing form and smothered out the fire. Then, lifting the senseless girl in his arms, he made his way with the greatest difficulty to a door and forced his way through the striving mass of human beings out upon the thronged pavement.

The prima donna's carriage was waiting on the pavement, and Professor Larue, who had come with it a minute before, was darting frantically up and down ceaselessly around the doors of the doomed building.

Afterward Professor Larue told how a tall man with a face so blackened with fire and soot as to be quite unrecognizable, had put Jaquelina into his arms and fallen fainting on the pavement.

Someone had attended to him—he could not tell who—for he had been so distracted with grief and horror over the tragic fate of his ward he had not waited to see, but all inquiry afterward failed to discover the rescuer of the prima donna. No one had recognized him, no one knew where he went, or whence he came.

Professor Larue in the gratitude of his heart wished to discover him and reward him generously, but his persistent inquiries through the personal column of the Herald elicited no reply. The man was modest as well as brave. He did not wish to be known.

Walter Earle had had a most terrible time getting his unconscious sister out of the building; his heart was distracted with grief over the tragic fate which had overtaken his darling. But for the encumbrance of his sister he would have rushed out in an attempt to reach Jaquelina through that struggling mass of maddened humanity. But Violet lay like an inert, helpless burden on his hands. It was only by superhuman efforts that he ever reached the outer world with her. Then when he had put her in a carriage, taken her home, and had seen her revive, he drove rapidly back to the theater.

They told him there that a stranger had leaped upon the burning stage and smothered the flames that enveloped the prima donna.

"She was saved from that terrible holocaust of flame, then," Walter cried out, almost wild with the joy of the tidings.

But no one could tell him whether Madame Dolores was living or not. Her rescuer had carried her out of the burning building and placed her in the arms of Professor Larue. He had carried her away, and no one knew anything further as yet. Walter drove to the hotel where the professor and his wife were staying with their ward. He sent up his card and the professor came down to him.

They looked at each other silently a moment, then Walter breathed "Lina?" through white lips that could scarcely utter that simple name.

Professor Larue shook his head sadly.

"Do not tell me she is dead!" Walter exclaimed, in an agony of fear and dread.

"She lives," the professor answered, "if a mere wavering breath may be called living. But she is horribly, horribly burned, and her sufferings are fearful. Half a dozen doctors are with her this moment. They will save her life if it is possible to accomplish it."

"Thank God, she lives," Walter exclaimed, and hurried away to carry the welcome news to Violet, while the almost heart-broken old professor hurried back to that quiet chamber where the angels of life and death were striving together over Jaquelina Meredith's scorched and writhing frame.

So the prima donna's bridal day dawned dark and gloomy, and overcast, and Jaquelina lay upon her couch of pain, swathed from head to foot in bandages of linen, while the breath of life wavered unevenly between the pallid, parted lips, and every gasp was one of almost unendurable anguish.

And the morning papers which chronicled the particulars of the great fire, told the public that Madam Dolores would live, but she had been so horribly burned, even to her face and hands, that her beauty would be marred and ruined forever. The physicians were of the opinion that her exquisite voice would be destroyed also. She would be a perfect physical wreck.

"I do not believe it!" Walter Earle cried out in passionate unbelief, and he went to the physicians and asked them for the truth. They were very sorry for him, but they confirmed the newspaper reports. They believed that Madame Dolores would carry those terrible scars on her face to the grave, and they did not think it possible that she would ever sing again.

"I would rather she had died than lose all her charms!" Walter cried to his own heart, in a perfect fever of regret and despair, and he went to the hotel and begged Mrs. Larue to let him see Jaquelina if but for a moment.

The professor's wife refused flatly. She said that Lina was far too ill to see anyone, and that the lightest footstep in the room set her wild with nervous pain. He must wait. It would be some time—three weeks, perhaps—before he could be admitted to the room.

Almost distracted with his trouble, the young man returned to Violet who was still suffering from the effects of her last night's shock and excitement. He was surprised to find Ronald Valchester in the drawing-room with his sister—Ronald, looking pale and ill, with his right arm carried in a sling.

"Ronald—you here!" he cried. "How glad I am to see you! When did you arrive?"

"Last night," said Ronald briefly.

"You changed your mind about coming to my marriage, did you not?"

Ronald smiled and did not reply.

"Oh, Ronald, is it not terrible?" cried Walter. "My poor little Lina. Her beautiful voice and her beautiful face ruined forever!"

"Her life is spared, at least," Ronald answered, in a low, grateful voice.

"If I had been Lina I would rather have died than have lost my voice and my beauty," cried Violet. "She will have nothing left to live for now."

"She will have Walter's love," said Ronald Valchester gravely, and Violet saw that he was regarding her with a slight air of surprise.

"Oh, yes, I had forgotten that," she said quickly. "But it is dreadful for Walter. He is such a beauty-worshiper, and he thought Lina the most beautiful girl he ever saw."

Walter changed the conversation quickly by asking Ronald what was wrong with his arm that he wore it in a sling, and his friend replied briefly that he had been hurt by a slight accident. That was all the explanation he volunteered.