ings. And it was lit--and somehow this was more
familiar to her mind than any other fact about her--by a flickering,
purplish-crimson light. Then close to her, rising above a confusion of
debris, she recognised the Trocadero; it was changed, something had
gone from it, but its outline was unmistakable. It stood out against a
streaming, whirling uprush of red-lit steam. And with that she recalled
Paris and the Seine and the warm, overcast evening and the beautiful,
luminous organisation of the War Control....

She drew herself a little way up the slope of earth on which she lay,
and examined her surroundings with an increasing understanding....

The earth on which she was lying projected like a cape into the river.
Quite close to her was a brimming lake of dammed-up water, from which
these warm rivulets and torrents were trickling. Wisps of vapour came
into circling existence a foot or so from its mirror-surface. Near
at hand and reflected exactly in the water was the upper part of a
familiar-looking stone pillar. On the side of her away from the water
the heaped ruins rose steeply in a confused slope up to a glaring crest.
Above and reflecting this glare towered pillowed masses of steam rolling
swiftly upward to the zenith. It was from this crest that the livid glow
that lit the world about her proceeded, and slowly her mind connected
this mound with the vanished buildings of the War Control.

'Mais!' she whispered, and remained with staring eyes quite motionless
for a time, crouching close to the warm earth.

Then presently this dim, broken human thing began to look about it
again. She began to feel the need of fellowship. She wanted to question,
wanted to speak, wanted to relate her experience. And her foot hurt her
atrociously. There ought to be an ambulance. A little gust of querulous
criticisms blew across her mind. This surely was a disaster! Always
after a disaster there should be ambulances and helpers moving about....

She craned her head. There was something there. But everything was so
still!

'Monsieur!' she cried. Her ears, she noted, felt queer, and she began to
suspect that all was not well with them.

It was terribly lonely in this chaotic strangeness, and perhaps this
man--if it was a man, for it was difficult to see--might for all his
stillness be merely insensible. He might have been stunned....

The leaping glare beyond sent a ray into his corner and for a moment
every little detail was disti