Select the 5 themes we are covering throughout the course

Which short story does this extract come from? "Fire!" screamed a voice. The house lights flashed, water pumps shot water from the ceilings. But the solvent spread on the linoleum, licking, eating, under the kitchen door, while the voices took it up in chorus: "Fire, fire, fire!"

The house tried to save itself. Doors sprang tightly shut, but the windows were broken by the heat and the wind blew and sucked upon the fire.

The house gave ground as the fire in ten billion angry sparks moved with flaming ease from room to room and then up the stairs. While scurrying water rats squeaked from the walls, pistolled their water, and ran for more. And the wall sprays let down showers of mechanical rain. But too late. Somewhere, sighing, a pump shrugged to a stop. The quenching rain ceased. The reserve water supply which had filled baths and washed dishes for many quiet days was gone.

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

At the end of one week they had lost all hope. And Loisel, who had aged five years, declared:

"We must consider how to replace the jewel." The next day they took the box which had held it, and went to the jeweler whose name they found inside. He consulted his books. "It was not I, Madame, who sold the necklace; I must simply have supplied the case."

And so they went from jeweler to jeweler, looking for a necklace like the other one, consulting their memories, both sick with grief and anguish. In a shop at the Palais Royal, they found a string of diamonds which seemed to be exactly what they were looking for. It was worth forty thousand francs. They could have it for thirty-six thousand.

“He’s mad.” “Someone should call the police.”

With a twist of the body Drioli suddenly shook off the man and before anyone could stop him he was running down the gallery shouting, “I’ll show you! I’ll show you! I’ll show you!” He flung off his overcoat, then his jacket and shirt, and he turned so that his naked back was towards the people.

“There!” he cried, breathing quickly. “You see? There it is!”

There was a sudden absolute silence in the room, each person arrested in what he was doing, standing motionless in a kind of shocked, uneasy surprise. They were staring at the tattooed picture. It was still there, the colors as bright as ever. Somebody said, “My God, but it is!” “His early manner, yes?” “It is fantastic, fantastic!” “And look, it is signed!” “Old one, when was this done?”

“In 1913,” Drioli said, without turning around. “In the autumn of 1913. Who taught Soutine to tattoo? I taught him. And the woman? She was my wife.”

The gallery owner was pushing through the crowd towards Drioli. He was calm now, deadly serious, making a smile with his mouth. “Monsieur,” he said, “I will buy it. I said I will buy it. Monsieur.”

“How can- you buy it?” Drioli asked softly.

And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."

"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.

He ran up the stairs after the child, who had darted into a room leading off a small landing, and followed her inside and slammed the door, and, merciful heaven, there was a bolt which he rammed into its socket. The child was crouching by the open window. If he shouted for help someone would surely hear, someone would surely come before the main in pursuit threw himself against the door and it gave, because there was no one but themselves, no parents, the room was bare except for a mattress on an old bed, and a heap of rags in one corner.

‘It’s all right,’ he panted, ‘it’s all right,’ and held out his hand, trying to smile. The child struggled to her feet and stood before him, the pixie-hood falling from her head to the floor. He stared at her, incredulity turning to horror, to fear.

They trooped down the stairs and out of the building, the blind sister leaning on her twin’s arm, and outside she turned her sightless eyes to John. ‘You saw us’, she said, ‘and your wife too. But not today. You saw us in the future.’

Her voice was softer than her sister’s, slower, she seemed to have some slight impediment in her speech.

‘I don’t follow’, replied John, bewildered.

He turned to the active sister and she shook her head at him, frowning, and put her finger on her lips.

‘Come along dear,’ she said to her twin. ‘You know you’re very tired, and I want to get you home.’ Then, sotto voce to John, ‘She’s psychic. Your wife told you, I believe, but I don’t want her to go into trances here in the street.’

"Hush!" said Mr. Adams, raising his trembling hand. "All be quite for a moment. Agatha!" he called as loudly as he could. "Listen to me." During the following silence they could just hear the faint sound of the child wildly shrieking in the dark vault in a panic of terror.

"My precious darling!" wailed the mother. "She will die of fright! Open the door! Oh, break it open! Can't you men do something?"

"There isn't a man nearer than Little Rock who can open that door," said Mr. Adams, in a shaky voice. "My God! Spencer, what shall we do? That child--she can't stand it long in there. There isn't enough air, and, besides, she'll go into convulsions from fright."