Darkness and Dawn

ng wrapped in fogs, a sign of consciousness

that full bosom, to which again a vital warm

r, her beautiful face buried and shielded in th

again! The miracle of mira

. She stirred. She moaned, still for the moment powerless to cast of

themselves in the masses of thick, luxuriant hair which

bout her at the strangest vision which since the world began had ever been the lot of any human cre

ry long, ago) her eyes had closed with that sudden and unconquerable drowsiness, of that

c. Here or there a heap of whitish dust be

eemed to her--had decked this office of Allan Stern, consulting engine

cobwebs were draped so thickly as almost to exclude the light of day--a

, eyes wide with amaze, a spider seized his buzzin

e down in the far corner, cheeped wit

rubbed

member this when I wake up. Of all the dreams I've ever had, this one's certain

expression dawned across her face. Her eyes grew wild with a

awakening, bore upon her consciousness

jective, positive! And with a gasp of fright she struggle

raised to strike, scuttled away and vanished through a gaping void where once

hands clutched to her breast, whereon her very cl

were lurking in the dim corner at her back. She tried

he took the first few steps her gown--a mere t

short. About her she peered in vain for someth

he place by the window where they should have been, and were not. Her shapely feet

pewriter? Great Heavens! What's the m

f rotten wood. Amid all this decay she saw some bits of rust, a corroded type-bar or two-

hair fell, as she stooped to see this strange, incomprehensible phenomenon. She tried to pi

ring cry the girl

supplicated. "What--wh

numbed. Breathing not, she only stared in a wild kind of cringing a

d that, down the dismantled corridor, up the wreckage of the stairs

ven the echoes flung back only dull, vacuous sounds th

ar hum of the metropolis now rose from what, when she had fallen a

med part of the musty, choking atmosphere--a silenc

very perishable thing, the girl ran, shuddering, back into

e caught it up

l! What? Only suc

ome catastrophe, incredibly vast, some disaster cosmic

she. "My mother--dead

f anguished horror racking her. All at once her teet

what to do. Then her terror-stricken gaze fell on the doorway leading from her outer off

planks and splintered bits of wood,

her hair, like a Godiva of another age; and to her eyes, womanlike,

re--are you dead, too? You c

t. Down in a crumbling mass it fell. Thick dust bellied up in a cloud, throug

ered through this dust-haze. A sick foreboding of evil possessed her at thought of

esting on the moldy jam. Then, with a cry, she started forward-

ouding of her messy hair, she stood naked. Fo

Heaven!"

of many things that had been and were now no more, her s

liv

t saw not, yet; toward her he

liv

this world-ruin, no