"Come, now; come with me," he bade.

Out through the doorway into the hall he made his way while the girl
followed. As she went she gathered her wondrous veil of hair more
closely about her.

In this universal disorganization, this wreck of all the world, how
little the conventions counted!

Together, picking their way up the broken stairs, where now the
rust-bitten steel showed through the corroded stone and cement in a
thousand places, they cautiously climbed.

Here, spider-webs thickly shrouded the way, and had to be brushed
down. There, still more bats bung and chippered in protest as the
intruders passed.

A fluffy little white owl blinked at them from a dark niche; and, well
toward the top of the climb, they flushed up a score of mud-swallows
which had ensconced themselves comfortably along a broken balustrade.

At last, however, despite all unforeseen incidents of this sort, they
reached the upper platform, nearly a thousand feet above the earth.

Out through the relics of the revolving door they crept, he leading,
testing each foot of the way before the girl. They reached the narrow
platform of red tiling that surrounded the tower.

Even here they saw with growing amazement that the hand of time and of
this maddening mystery had laid its heavy imprint.