window from which I and the artilleryman had watched the dawn. No one
had closed it since. The smashed bushes were just as I had left them
nearly four weeks ago. I stumbled into the hall, and the house felt
empty. The stair carpet was ruffled and discoloured where I had
crouched, soaked to the skin from the thunderstorm the night of the
catastrophe. Our muddy footsteps I saw still went up the stairs.
I followed them to my study, and found lying on my writing-table still,
with the selenite paper weight upon it, the sheet of work I had left on
the afternoon of the opening of the cylinder. For a space I stood
reading over my abandoned arguments. It was a paper on the probable
development of Moral Ideas with the development of the civilising
process; and the last sentence was the opening of a prophecy: In about
two hundred years, I had written, we may expect The sentence ended
abruptly. I remembered my inability to fix my mind that morning,
scarcely a month gone by, and how I had broken off to get my _Daily
Chronicle_ from the newsboy. I remembered how I went down to the garden
gate as he came along, and how I had listened to his odd story of Men
from Mars.
I came down and went into the dining room. There were the mutton and
the bread, both far gone now in decay, and a beer bottle overturned,
just as I and the artilleryman had left them. My home was desolate. I
perceived the folly of the faint hope I had cherished so long. And then
a strange thing occurred. It is no use, said a voice. The house is
deserted. No one has been here these ten days. Do not stay here to
torment yourself. No one escaped but you.
I was startled. Had I spoken my thought aloud? I turned, and the French
window was open behind me. I made a step to it, and stood looking out.
And there, amazed and afraid, even as I stood amazed and afraid, were
my cousin and my wife my wife white and tearless. She gave a faint cry.
I came, she said. I knew knew
She put her hand to her throat swayed. I made a step forward, and
caught her in my arms.
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