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"That we are actually seeing the thing so often dreahty heart is lying still,' at last--forever? The heart of the world, never to beat again?"

He hts were running

So then, could he and Beatrice, just they two, be in stern reality the sole survivors of the entire human race? That race for whose material welfare he had, once on a time, done such tremendous work?

Could they be destined, he and she, to witness the closing chapter in the long, painful, glorious Book of Evolution? Slightly he shivered and glanced round

Till he could adjust his reason to the facts, could learn the truth and weigh it, he knew he must not analyze too closely; he felt he must try not to think For that way lay , shot a broad glory all across the sky Purple and gold and criht-bands over the breast of the Hudson

Dark blue the shadows strea forests, its blank-staring s and sagging walls, its thousands of gaping vacancies, where wood and stone and brick had crumbled down--the city where once the tides of hu resistlessly

High overhead drifted a few rosy clouds, part of that changeless nature which alone did not repel or uered waifs, these chance survivors, this ether by the hand of fate

They were dazed, fascinated by the splendor of that sunset over a world devoid of hue or understand

Stern and his les of Union Square, the leafy frond-masses that marked the one-time course of Twenty-Third Street, the forest in Madison Square, and the truncated coluer Diana turned her huntress bow to every varying breeze

They heard their own hearts beat The intake of their breath sounded strangely loud Above the sittered

All at once the girl spoke

"See the Flatiron Building over there!" said she "What a hideous wreck!"

Froazed minutely at the shattered pile of stone and metal

Blotched as with leprosy stood the walls, whencea vast hfare

In nuh The whole roof had caved in, crushing down the upper stories, of which only a few sparse upstanding metal beams remained