ing up, and the grass scorched brown from
the heat, and it was twisting as if it were in
pain. And animals, but no other person
save myself, only wild things, were crouch-
ing and looking up at that sky. They could
not run because there was no place to which
to go."

"You were having a vision of the last
man," I said. "I wonder myself sometimes
whether this old globe of ours is going to
collapse suddenly and take us with her, or
whether we will disappear through slow
disastrous ages of fighting and crushing,
with hunger and blight to help us to the
end. And then, at the last, perhaps, some
luckless fellow, stronger than the rest, will
stand amid the ribs of the rotting earth and
go mad."

The woman's eyes were fixed on me,
large and luminous. "Yes," she said; "he
would go mad from the lonesomeness of it.
He would be afraid to be left alone like that
with God. No one would want to be taken
into God's secrets."

"And our last man," I went on, "would
have to stand there on that swaying wreck
till even the sound of the crumbling earth