ly, "that very, very often we would have
visited like this--you and I--in the evening."

A lump choked him, and he could not answer.

"I would very often have come and perched myself at your feet like this."

"Yes, yes, my beloved."

"And you would always have told me how beautiful my hair was--always. You
would not have forgotten that, John--or have grown tired?"

"No, no--never!"

His arms were about her. He was drawing her closer.

"And we would have had beautiful times together, John--writing, and going
adventuring, and--and----"

He felt her trembling, throbbing, and her arms tightened about him.

And now, again up through the smother of her hair, came the
_tick-tick-tick_ of his watch.

He felt her fumbling at his watch pocket, and in a moment she was holding
the timepiece between them, so that the light of the lantern fell on the
face of it.

"It is three minutes of four, John."

The watch slipped from her fingers, and now she drew herself up so that her
arms were about his neck, and their faces touched.

"Dear John, you love me?"

"So much that even now, in the face of death, I am happy," he whispered.
"Joanne, sweetheart, we are not going to be separated. We are
going--together. Through all eternity it must be like this--you and I,
together. Little girl, wind your hair about me--tight!"

"There--and there--and there, John! I have tied you to me, and you are
buried in it! Kiss me, John----"

And then the wild and terrible fear of a great loneliness swept through
him. For Joanne's voice had died away in a whispering breath, and the lips
he kissed did not kiss him back, and her body lay heavy, heavy, heavy in
his arms. Yet in his loneliness he thanked God for bringing her oblivion in
these last moments, and with his face crushed to hers he waited. For he
knew that it was no longer a matter of minutes, but of seconds, and in
those seconds he prayed, until up through the warm smother of her
hair--with the clearness of a tolling bell--came the sound of the little
gong in his watch striking the Hour of Four!

In space other worlds might have crumbled into ruin; on earth the stories
of empires might have been written and the lives of men grown old in those
first century-long seconds in which John Aldous held his breath and waited
after the chiming of the hour-bell in the watch on the cavern floor. How
long he waited he did not know; how closely he was crushing Joanne to his
breast he did not realiz