II


THE EAST EIGHTY-FIRST STREET FIRE

They emerged in all the magic wildness of an autumn night and walked
east on Eighty-first Street. The loft building was near the corner of
Second Avenue. They passed under the elevated structure, cutting through
a hurrying throng of people.

"Take my arm," cried Joe.

She took it, trembling. They made an odd couple passing along between
the squalid red-brick tenements, now in shadow, now in the glow of some
little shop window, now under a sparkling lamp. At Avenue A they went
south to Seventy-ninth Street, and again turned east, passing a row of
bright model tenements, emerging at last at the strange riverside.

Down to the very edge of the unpaved waste they walked, or rather
floated, so strange and uplifted and glorious they felt, blown and
carried bodily with the exultant west wind, and they only stopped when
they reached the wooden margin, where an old scow, half laden with
brick, was moored fast with ropes. This scow heaved up and down with the
motion of the rolling waters; the tight ropes grated; the water swashed
melodiously.