She broke short off. In her trembling hands the telescope sank. Stern
saw that she was very pale.

"Take me down!" she whispered. "I can't stand it any longer--I can't,
possibly! The sight of that wrecked office! Let's go down where I
can't see _that!_"

Gently, as though she had been a frightened child, Stern led her round
the platform to the doorway, then down the crumbling stairs and so to
the wreckage and dust-strewn confusion of what had been his office.

And there, his hand upon her shoulder, he bade her still be of good
courage.

"Listen now, Beatrice," said he. "Let's try to reason this thing out
together, let's try to solve this problem like two intelligent human
beings.

"Just what's happened, we don't know; we can't know yet a while, till
I investigate. We don't even know what year this is.

"Don't know whether anybody else is still alive, anywhere in the
world. But we can find out--after we've made provision for the
immediate present and formed some rational plan of life.

"If all the rest _are_ gone, swept away, wiped out clean like figures
on a slate, then why _we_ should have happened to survive whatever it
was that struck the earth, is still a riddle far beyond our
comprehension."