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 his thoughts.
To divert his wonderings and to ease a situation which oppressed him, he began adjusting the "level" telescope to his eye.
With his back planted firmly against the tower, he studied a wide section of the dead and buried world so very far below them. With astonishment he cried: "It is true, Beatrice! Everything's swept clean away. Nothing left, nothing at all--no signs of life!
"As far as I can reach with these lenses, universal ruin. We're all alone in this whole world, just you and I--and everything belongs to us!"
"Everything--all ours?"
"Everything! Even the future--the future of the human race!"
Suddenly he felt her tremble at his side. Down at her he looked, a great new tenderness possessing him. He saw that tears were forming in her eyes.
Beatrice pressed both hands to her face and bowed her head. Filled with strange emotions, the man watched her for a moment.
Then in silence, realizing the uselessness of any words, knowing that in this monstrous Ragnarok of all humanity no ordinary relations of life could bear either cogency or meaning, he took her in his arms.
And there alone with her, far above the ruined world, high in the pure air of mid-heaven, he comforted the girl with words till then unthought-of and unknown to him.