"Look out!" Stern cautioned. "Don't lean against any of those stones."
Firmly he held her back as she, eagerly inquisitive, started to
advance toward the railing.

"Don't go anywhere near the edge. It may all be rotten and undermined,
for anything we know. Keep back here, close to the wall."

Sharply he inspected it a moment.

"Facing stones are pretty well gone," said he, "but, so far as I can
see, the steel frame isn't too bad. Putting everything together, I'll
probably be able before long to make some sort of calculation of the
date. But for now we'll have to call it 'X,' and let it go at that."

"The year X!" she whispered under her breath. "Good Heavens, am I as
old as that?"

He made no answer, but only drew her to him protectingly, while all
about them the warm summer wind swept onward to the sea, out over the
sparkling expanses of the bay--alone unchanged in all that universal
wreckage.

In the breeze her heavy masses of hair stirred luringly. He felt its
silken caress on his half-naked shoulder, and in his ears the blood
began to pound with strange insistence.

Quite gone now the daze and drowsiness of the first wakening. Stern
did not even feel weak or shaken. On the contrary, never had life
bounded more warmly, more fully, in his veins.