e
was needed in that weatherless place, I turned to the right and followed
the wide street to the temple enclosure. Through the pillared courts
I went, my footsteps, although I walked as softly as I could, echoing
loudly in that intense silence, through the great doors into the utter
solitude of the vast and perfect fane.

Words can not tell the loneliness of that place. It flowed over me like
a sea and seemed to swallow up my being, so that even the wildest and
most dangerous beast would have been welcome as a companion. I was as
terrified as a child that wakes to find itself deserted in the dark.
Also an uncanny sense of terrors to come oppressed me, till I could have
cried aloud if only to hear the sound of a mortal voice. Yonder was
the grim statue of Fate, the Oracle of the Kings of the Sons of Wisdom,
which was believed to bow its stony head in answer to their prayers. I
ran to it, eager for its terrible shelter, for on either side of it were
figures of human beings. Even their cold marble was company of a sort,
though alas! over all frowned Fate.

Let anyone imagine himself standing alone beneath the dome of St.
Paul's; in the centre of that cathedral brilliant with mysterious light,
and stretched all about it a London that had been dead and absolutely
unpeopled for tens of thousands of years. If he can do this he will
gather some idea of my physical state. Let him add to his mind-picture
a knowledge that on the following day something was to happen not unlike
the end of the world, as prognosticated by the Book of Revelation and by
most astronomers, and he will have some idea of my mental perturbations.
Add to the mixture a most mystic yet very real love affair and an
assignation before that symbol of the cold fate which seems to sway the
universes down to the tiniest detail of individual lives, and he may
begin to understand what I, Humphrey Arbuthnot, experienced during my
vigil in this sanctuary of a vanished race.

It seemed long before Yva came, but at last she did come. I caught sight
of her far away beyond the temple gate, flitting through the unholy
brightness of the pillared courts like a white moth at night and seeming
quite as small. She approached; now she was as a ghost, and then drawing
near, changed into a living, breathing, lovely woman. I opened my
arms, and with something like a sob she sank into them and we kissed as
mortals do.

"I could not come more quickly," she said. "The Lord Oro need