Darkness and Dawn | Page 6

we can't tell. But to judge by the appearance up here, it's even longer than I thought.
See, the very tiles are cracked and crumbling.
"Tilework is usually considered highly recalcitrant--but this is gone. There's grass
growing in the dust that's settled between the tiles. And--why, here's a young oak that's
taken root and forced a dozen slabs out of place."
"The winds and birds have carried seeds up here, and acorns," she answered in an awed
voice. "Think of the time that must have passed. Years and years.
"But tell me," and her brow wrinkled with a sudden wonder, "tell me how we've ever
lived so long? I can't understand it.
"Not only have we escaped starvation, but we haven't frozen to death in all these bitter
winters. How can that have happened?"
"Let it all go as suspended animation till we learn the facts, if we ever do," he replied,
glancing about with wonder.
"You know, of course, how toads have been known to live embedded in rock for
centuries? How fish, hard-frozen, have been brought to life again? Well--"
"But we are human beings."
"I know. Certain unknown natural forces, however, might have made no more of us than
of non-mammalian and less highly organized creatures.
"Don't bother your head about these problems yet a while. On my word, we've got
enough to do for the present without much caring about how or why.
"All we definitely know is that some very long, undetermined period of time has passed,
leaving us still alive. The rest can wait."
"How long a time do you judge it?" she anxiously inquired.
"Impossible to say at once. But it must have been something extraordinary--probably far
longer than either of us suspect.
"See, for example, the attrition of everything up here exposed to the weather." He pointed
at the heavy stone railing. "See how that is wrecked, for instance."
A whole segment, indeed, had fallen inward. Its debris lay in confusion, blocking all the
southern side of the platform.
The bronze bars, which Stern well remembered--two at each corner, slanting downward
and bracing a rail--had now wasted to mere pockmarked shells of metal.
Three had broken entirely and sagged wantonly awry with the displacement of the stone

blocks, between which the vines and grasses had long been carrying on their destructive
work.
"Look out!" Stern cautioned. "Don't lean against any of those stones." Firmly he held her
back as she, eagerly inquisitive, started to advance toward the railing.
"Don't go anywhere near the edge. It may all be rotten and undermined, for anything we
know. Keep back here, close to the wall."
Sharply he inspected it a moment.
"Facing stones are pretty well gone," said he, "but, so far as I can see, the steel frame isn't
too bad. Putting everything together, I'll probably be able before long to make some sort
of calculation of the date. But for now we'll have to call it 'X,' and let it go at that."
"The year X!" she whispered under her breath. "Good Heavens, am I as old as that?"
He made no answer, but only drew her to him protectingly, while all about them the
warm summer wind swept onward to the sea, out over the sparkling expanses of the
bay--alone unchanged in all that universal wreckage.
In the breeze her heavy masses of hair stirred luringly. He felt its silken caress on his
half-naked shoulder, and in his ears the blood began to pound with strange insistence.
Quite gone now the daze and drowsiness of the first wakening. Stern did not even feel
weak or shaken. On the contrary, never had life bounded more warmly, more fully, in his
veins.
The presence of the girl set his heart throbbing heavily, but he bit his lip and restrained
every untoward thought.
Only his arm tightened a little about that warmly clinging body. Beatrice did not shrink
from him. She needed his protection as never since the world began had woman needed
man.
To her it seemed that come what might, his strength and comfort could not fail. And,
despite everything, she could not--for the moment--find unhappiness within her heart.
Quite vanished now, even in those brief minutes since their awakening, was all
consciousness of their former relationship--employer and employed.
The self-contained, courteous, yet unapproachable engineer had disappeared.
Now, through all the extraneous disguise of his outer self, there lived and breathed just a
man, a young man, thewed with the vigor of his plentitude. All else had been swept clean
away by this great change.
The girl was different, too. Was this strong woman, eager-eyed and brave, the quiet,

low-voiced stenographer he remembered, busy only with her machine, her file-boxes, and
her carbon-copies? Stern dared not realize the transmutation. He ventured hardly fringe it
in