*bing engine, with the steam condensing
in its boilers--wreck the car she was in--she
and Una!

No! She did not think of herself alone.
All the frail girlish ice was a gimcrack
now.

But the terrors of the swamped car,
that snuffling threat of steam ahead--a
deep bass uz-z-z!--momentarily made
a gimcrack of other things too--of everything
but the desperate instinct to get
out--free, somehow.

Calling upon Una to follow, she headed
for a dripping window-gap, to seize the
moment when the flood, now lower upon
that side, might give her a chance to
paddle through--scramble through--escape
on to the cracking ice, before the
opening was again blotted out.

But together with the cruelty of glass-*splinters,
ice-spars scratching her set face,
came the shock of an inner splinter: an
inkling, somehow, that Una was helpless,
could not follow, that, battered by
[[28]]

p027 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p028w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p029

v?