She looked at him now with strength and confidence.  He did not look like men, as she had always pictured men; but he acted like one and she was content.  In fifteen minutes they were at the central telephone exchange.  As they came to the door he stepped quickly before her and pressed her gently back as he closed it.  She heard him moving to and fro, and knew his burdens—­the poor, little burdens he bore.  When she entered, he was alone in the room.  The grim switchboard flashed its metallic face in cryptic, sphinx-like immobility.  She seated herself on a stool and donned the bright earpiece.  She looked at the mouthpiece.  She had never looked at one so closely before.  It was wide and black, pimpled with usage; inert; dead; almost sarcastic in its unfeeling curves.  It looked—­she beat back the thought—­but it looked,—­it persisted in looking like—­she turned her head and found herself alone.  One moment she was terrified; then she thanked him silently for his delicacy and turned resolutely, with a quick intaking of breath.

“Hello!” she called in low tones.  She was calling to the world.  The world must answer.  Would the world answer?  Was the world——­

Silence!

She had spoken too low.

“Hello!” she cried, full-voiced.

She listened.  Silence!  Her heart beat quickly.  She cried in clear, distinct, loud tones:  “Hello—­hello—­hello!”

What was that whirring?  Surely—­no—­was it the click of a receiver?

She bent close, she moved the pegs in the holes, and called and called, until her voice rose almost to a shriek, and her heart hammered.  It was as if she had heard the last flicker of creation, and the evil was silence.  Her voice dropped to a sob.  She sat stupidly staring into the black and sarcastic mouthpiece, and the thought came again.  Hope lay dead within her.  Yes, the cable and the rockets remained; but the world—­she could not frame the thought or say the word.  It was too mighty—­too terrible!  She turned toward the door with a new fear in her heart.  For the first time she seemed to realize that she was alone in the world with a stranger, with something more than a stranger,—­with a man alien in blood and culture—­unknown, perhaps unknowable.  It was awful!  She must escape—­she must fly; he must not see her again.  Who knew what awful thoughts—­

She gathered her silken skirts deftly about her young, smooth limbs—­listened, and glided into a sidehall.  A moment she shrank back:  the hall lay filled with dead women; then she leaped to the door and tore at it, with bleeding fingers, until it swung wide.  She looked out.  He was standing at the top of the alley,—­silhouetted, tall and black, motionless.  Was he looking at her or away?  She did not know—­she did not care.  She simply leaped and ran—­ran until she found herself alone amid the dead and the tall ramparts of towering buildings.