on the eroded floor.

They ate with their fingers and drank out of the bottles, _sans_
apology. Strange were their speculations, their wonderings, their
plans--now discussed specifically, now half-voiced by a mere word that
thrilled them both with sudden, poignant emotion.

An so an hour passed, and the night deepened toward the birth of
another day. The fire burned low and died, for they had little to
replenish it with.

Down sank the moon, her pale light dimming as she went, her faint
illumination wanly creeping across the disordered, wrack-strewn floor.

And at length Stern, in the outer office, Beatrice in the other, they
wrapped themselves within their furs and laid them down to sleep.

Despite the age-long trance from which they both had but so recently
emerged, a strange lassitude weighed on them.

Yet long after Beatrice had lost herself in dreams, Stern lay and
thought strange thoughts, yearning and eager thoughts, there in the
impenetrable gloom.



CHAPTER VII

THE OUTER WORLD