CHAPTER XXIV.

PROFESSOR DOEPKIN’S HEROISM.

Professor Doepkin opened the door of the box, and paused, his heart throbbing in a fashion quite strange for a staid German devoted to scientific researches.

Emmett Harlow looked around, and, quickly advancing, drew him forward, presenting him to each of the ladies in turn, making Italy the last one.

And he watched, with a keen, almost breathless, anxiety, the meeting between his German friend and his dark-eyed love. He was close enough to see that the man caught his breath, with a stifled gasp of emotion, before the beauty of the young girl.

She stood before him, a slender, stately creature, graceful as a young palm-tree, her dark head lifted with a staglike motion, her eyes beaming with a subtile fire. Her gown was of white, very soft and fine and clinging, with white chrysanthemums for the corsage-bouquet. On her bare throat and arms were strings of lustrous pearls clasped with diamonds, and a Grecian fillet, of the same pure jewels, bound the dark, curly locks to the proud young head. The pure white costume was a trying one, but the brilliancy of her coloring, the gleaming eyes, the coral lips, the sea-shell glow of her cheeks made an exquisite contrast.

The German’s blue-gray eyes gleamed beneath their disfiguring glasses with keen admiration, and he bowed low before the exquisite creature, who was murmuring, in a voice of flutelike melody:

“I have been wishing to know you ever since I first heard of you from Mr. Harlow.”

“I thank you,” he replied huskily, and in another moment found himself seated by her side in the chair that generous Emmett had vacated for his benefit.

But the curtain was rising, and Bernhardt, that incarnation of genius, was advancing across the stage. They gave her all their attention now, or at least they pretended to do so, but this newly introduced pair never lost for one moment the thrilling consciousness of each other’s presence.

At the meeting of their eyes an electric shock had seemed to thrill from heart to heart.

Italy could remember nothing like it except her first meeting with Francis Murray, when her heart had seemed for a moment to suspend its beating before the magnetic force of the man’s personality. She felt her face burning and her heart beating wildly at the German’s proximity, but the long lashes drooped to her cheeks, and she gazed steadily at the stage.

The German stole furtive glances at her while he seemed to be observing Madam Bernhardt’s grand conception of her part. Now and then he looked from her rather curiously at Mrs. Vale.

The marble pallor of the exquisite blonde face, with its frame of golden locks and its tragic, deep-blue eyes, had a sort of fascination for him.

“It is the face of a suffering angel,” he thought. “How could any one ever have believed her a murderess?”

He was deeply interested in all that had been told him of this woman, and when the curtain fell on the third act he addressed some trifling remark to her about the play, just to hear her speak.

She turned her dark-blue eyes on him and replied to him very pleasantly, for somehow she had been favorably impressed at first sight with Professor Doepkin.

Italy drew back a little and listened in silent pleasure to the sound of his low and well-trained voice whose cadences thrilled her heart with strange delight.

But suddenly he became aware that the others were listening to him with interest, and that moment he abruptly withdrew into himself as though overcome with shyness. Ralph and Emmett smiled at each other, and threw themselves into the breach, and the professor was extremely quiet all the rest of the time, but he kept his place at Italy’s side, and at the close of the play escorted her to the carriage and handed her in, even standing still a moment on the curbstone with a tender air to watch it roll away.

“The old chap is coming out finely. He will not forget his dress-coat the next time he is to join a theater-party with Miss Vale,” laughed Ralph Allen.

But the smitten German’s romance went even farther that night.

Long after the midnight hour had struck, and the streets of Boston were almost deserted, he paced the snowy street across the way from Italy’s home, and gazed with yearning eyes up at the darkened windows, wondering which curtained casement belonged to her, his peerless goddess.

Decidedly the professor was far gone, very far gone, on that road that every man travels once at least before he dies. All at once he seemed to realize it himself, and hurried abruptly away.

“Ach, I was really making a fool of myself,” he grunted. “What if any one had seen me? At my age, too!”

And he walked resolutely several blocks toward his boarding-house. All at once he stopped short and listened to the rising wind intently.

“Am I dreaming, or am I crazed?” he muttered. “Perhaps my head is wrong, for I fancied _she_ was calling to me, praying me to return. It is the wind, I know, only the wind, but yet--I will go back!”

And, impatient at his own folly, he yet resolutely retraced his steps.

As he turned the corner nearest the house a man almost rushed past him, hurrying by in a sort of frenzied haste that made Professor Doepkin start and give him a keen look. The pedestrian dashed past and disappeared round the corner, and the German recoiled with an exclamation of amazement, as though in recognition.

The stranger was tall and slight, his figure muffled in a long fur-lined overcoat. A dark derby hat was drawn low over his brows, but the professor caught a glimpse of a pale, dark face with wild, gleaming dark eyes and mustached lips curved in a demoniac expression of terrible cruelty. Then he flashed past, and Doepkin hurried on, exclaiming:

“Percy Seabright! But what an expression! It was that of a madman!”

He turned the corner toward Mrs. Vale’s house, then suddenly he saw that the whole neighborhood was illuminated by a glare of light as bright as noonday. In another moment he saw fiery flames and smoke bursting out of the windows of Italy’s home, wrapping the whole house in a winding-sheet of flame.

A loud and prolonged shriek divided the shuddering midnight air.

“Fire! Fire! Fire!”

In an incredibly short space of time the street began to fill up with a shouting, gesticulating throng of human beings. The fire-bells rang, and soon the fire-engines came clattering upon the scene.

But the fire had gained such rapid headway that it was feared the inmates could not escape.

In the meantime Professor Doepkin had rushed to the rear of the house, trying to make an entrance. In vain, for the back of the building was a more solid mass of flame than the front.

People said afterward that there had never been the equal of Professor Doepkin’s splendid daring. He helped the firemen to batter in the front doors, and then, with a blanket over his head, rushed into the house and disappeared in the black smoke that filled the broad hallway.

“The fellow must be crazy! He will never come out alive!” declared the firemen unanimously.

But they were mistaken. After about ten minutes of keen suspense, while the engines played rapidly on the doomed building, he reappeared, staggering down the marble steps with a white, senseless figure in his arms.

Eager hearts went to his assistance, and the woman he had rescued was tenderly cared for; but when he had looked once on the fair face and streaming, golden hair he cried out wildly:

“My God!”

And before any one could prevent him, he rushed back into that holocaust of smoke and flame.

“Poor fellow! there is some one that he loves inside that house. He must have rescued the wrong one,” cried one compassionate person.

“He is a hero!” cried another.

“But he has lost his senses, or he would never have gone back. The roof will fall in before he gets out. When the experienced firemen will not enter a burning building, you may always know that there is great danger,” cried out another croaker.

And indeed no one could blame them. The house was wrapped in vivid flame, and the efforts of the firemen began to be directed to saving the adjacent buildings.

Suddenly a prolonged cheer from a thousand throats rent the midnight air.

The hero had emerged from the building again with another drooping white form clasped to his breast. And the eager crowd saw that this one was a very young girl, with dark, flowing curls and of wonderful beauty.

In a few more minutes the roof fell in on the doomed house.

The papers next day chronicled the distressing facts that three servants had perished in the fire. It was added that Mrs. Vale and her daughter had only been saved by unexampled heroism.