She stopped.  She was alone.  Alone!  Alone on the streets—­alone in the city—­perhaps alone in the world!  There crept in upon her the sense of deception—­of creeping hands behind her back—­of silent, moving things she could not see,—­of voices hushed in fearsome conspiracy.  She looked behind and sideways, started at strange sounds and heard still stranger, until every nerve within her stood sharp and quivering, stretched to scream at the barest touch.  She whirled and flew back, whimpering like a child, until she found that narrow alley again and the dark, silent figure silhouetted at the top.  She stopped and rested; then she walked silently toward him, looked at him timidly; but he said nothing as he handed her into the car.  Her voice caught as she whispered: 

“Not—­that.”

And he answered slowly:  “No—­not that!”

They climbed into the car.  She bent forward on the wheel and sobbed, with great, dry, quivering sobs, as they flew toward the cable office on the east side, leaving the world of wealth and prosperity for the world of poverty and work.  In the world behind them were death and silence, grave and grim, almost cynical, but always decent; here it was hideous.  It clothed itself in every ghastly form of terror, struggle, hate, and suffering.  It lay wreathed in crime and squalor, greed and lust.  Only in its dread and awful silence was it like to death everywhere.

Yet as the two, flying and alone, looked upon the horror of the world, slowly, gradually, the sense of all-enveloping death deserted them.  They seemed to move in a world silent and asleep,—­not dead.  They moved in quiet reverence, lest somehow they wake these sleeping forms who had, at last, found peace.  They moved in some solemn, world-wide Friedhof, above which some mighty arm had waved its magic wand.  All nature slept until—­until, and quick with the same startling thought, they looked into each other’s eyes—­he, ashen, and she, crimson, with unspoken thought.  To both, the vision of a mighty beauty—­of vast, unspoken things, swelled in their souls; but they put it away.

Great, dark coils of wire came up from the earth and down from the sun and entered this low lair of witchery.  The gathered lightnings of the world centered here, binding with beams of light the ends of the earth.  The doors gaped on the gloom within.  He paused on the threshold.

“Do you know the code?” she asked.

“I know the call for help—­we used it formerly at the bank.”

She hardly heard.  She heard the lapping of the waters far below,—­the dark and restless waters—­the cold and luring waters, as they called.  He stepped within.  Slowly she walked to the wall, where the water called below, and stood and waited.  Long she waited, and he did not come.  Then with a start she saw him, too, standing beside the black waters.  Slowly he removed his coat and stood there silently.  She walked quickly to him and laid her hand on his arm.  He did not start or look.  The waters lapped on in luring, deadly rhythm.  He pointed down to the waters, and said quietly: