Those nearest the stage, seeing a man stand between them and the fire, had paused, and the hubbub for a moment had ceased.  Keith took advantage of it.

“This theatre can be emptied in three minutes if you take your time,” he cried; “but the fire is under control.”

Terpy had seized the burning piece of scenery and torn it down, and was tearing off the flaming edges with her naked hands.  He sprang to Terpy’s side.  Her filmy dress caught fire, but Keith jerked off his coat and smothered the flame.  Just then the water came, and the fire was subdued.

“Strike up that music again,” Keith said to the musicians.  Then to Terpy he said:  “Begin dancing.  Dance for your life!” The girl obeyed, and, all blackened as she was, began to dance again.  She danced as she had never danced before, and as she danced the people at the rear filed out, while most of those in the body of the house stood and watched her.  As the last spark of flame was extinguished the girl stopped, breathless.  Thunders of applause broke out, but ceased as Terpy suddenly sank to the floor, clutching with her blackened hands at her throat.  Keith caught her, and lowering her gently, straightened her dress.  The next moment a woman sprang out of her box and knelt beside him; a woman’s arm slipped under the dancer’s head, and Lois Huntington, on her knees, was loosening Terpy’s bodice as if she had been a sister.

A doctor came up out of the audience and bent over her, and the curtain rang down.

That night Keith and Lois and Mrs. Lancaster all spent in the waiting-room of the Emergency Hospital.  They knew that Terpy’s life was ebbing fast.  She had swallowed the flame, the doctor said.  During the night a nurse came and called for Keith.  The dying woman wanted to see him.  When Keith reached her bedside, the doctor, in reply to a look of inquiry from him, said:  “You can say anything to her; it will not hurt her.”  He turned away, and Keith seated himself beside her.  Her face and hands were swathed in bandages.

“I want to say good-by,” she said feebly.  “You don’t mind now what I said to you that time?” Keith, for answer, stroked the coverlid beside her.  “I want to go back home—­to Gumbolt.—­Tell the boys good-by for me.”

Keith said he would—­as well as he could, for he had little voice left.

“I want to see her,” she said presently.

“Whom?” asked Keith.

“The younger one.  The one you looked at all the time.  I want to thank her for the doll.  I ran away.”

Lois was sent for, but when she reached the bedside Terpy was too far gone to speak so that she could be understood.  But she was conscious enough to know that Lois was at her side and that it was her voice that repeated the Lord’s Prayer.

The newspapers the next day rang with her praises, and that night Keith went South with her body to lay it on the hillside among her friends, and all of old Gumbolt was there to meet her.