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So, bore upon her consciousness the dread tidings this was not a drea drove home to her the fact that it was real, objective, positive! And with a gasp of fright she struggled up amid the litter and the rubbish of that uncanny rooe scorpion, malevolent, and with its tail raised to strike, scuttled away and vanished through a gaping void where once the corridor-door had swung "Oh, oh! Where am I? What--what has--happened?"

Horrified beyond all words, pale and staring, both hands clutched to her breast, whereon her very clothing now had torn and cruh so in the dim corner at her back She tried to screaasp

Then she started toward the doorway Even as she took the first few steps her gown--a arment--fell away from her

And, confronted by a new problem, she stopped short About her she peered in vain for so

"Why--where's--where'stoward the place by the here they should have been, and were not Her shapely feet fell soundlessly in that strange and i

"My typewriter? Is--can that be my typewriter? Great Heavens! What's the ? Aer pile of dust mixed with soft and punky splinters of rotten wood Amid all this decay she saw some bits of rust, a corroded type-bar or two--even a few rubber key-caps, still recognizable, though with the letters quite obliterated

All about her, veiling her coloss and beauty, her lustrous hair fell, as she stooped to see this strange, incomprehensible phenomenon She tried to pick up one of the rubber caps At her merest touch it cru cry the girl sprang, terrified

"Merciful Heavens!" she supplicated "What--what does all this mean?"

For a ht, ofnot, she only stared in a wild kind of cringing aht do if you should see a dead man move

Then to the door she ran Out into the hall she peered, this way and that, down the dise of the stairs all cumbered, like the office itself, with dust and webs and vermin