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. The presence of the girl set his heart throbbing heavily, but he bit his lip and restrained every untoward thought. Only his arm tightened a little about that warmly clinging body. Beatrice did not shrink from him. She needed his protection as never since the world began had woman needed man. To her it seemed that come what might, his strength and comfort could not fail. And, despite everything, she could not--for the moment--find unhappiness within her heart. Quite vanished now, even in those brief minutes since their awakening, was all consciousness of their former relationship--employer and employed. The self-contained, courteous, yet unapproachable engineer had disappeared. Now, through all the extraneous disguise of his outer self, there lived and breathed just a man, a young man, thewed with the vigor of his plentitude. All else had been swept clean away by this great change. The girl was different, too. Was this strong woman, eager-eyed and brave, the quiet, low-voiced stenographer he remembered, busy only with her machine, her file-boxes, and her carbon-copies? Stern dared not realize the transmutation. He ventured hardly fringe it in his thoughts. To divert his wonderings and to ease a situation which oppressed him, he began adjusting the "level" telescope to his eye. With his back planted firmly against the tower, he studied a wide section of the dead and buried world so very far below them. With astonishment he cried: "It _is_ true, Beatrice! Everything's swept clean away. Nothing left, nothing at all--no signs of life! "As far as I can reach with these lenses, universal ruin. We're all alone in this whole world, just you and I--and everything belongs to us!" "Everything--all ours?" "Everything! Even the future--the future of the human race!" Suddenly he felt her tremble at his side. Down at her he looked, a great new tenderness possessing him. He saw that tears were forming in her eyes. Beatrice pressed both hands to her face and bowed her head. Filled with strange emotions, the man watched her for a moment. Then in silence, realizing the uselessness of any words, knowing that in this monstrous Ragnarok of all humanity no ordinary relations of life could bear either cogency or meaning, he took her in his arms.