She assented readily. Together, talking of their first urgent needs, of their plans for this new day and for this wonderful, strange life that now confronted them, they climbed the stairs again. Once more they issued out on to the weed-grown platform of red tiles. There they stood a moment, looking out with wonder over that vast, still, marvelous prospect of life-in-death. Suddenly the engineer spoke. "Tell me," said he, "where did you get that line of verse you quoted last night? The one about this vast city--heart all lying still, you know?" "That? Why, that was from Wordsworth's Sonnet on London Bridge, of course," she smiled up at him. "You remember it now, don't you?" "No-o," he disclaimed a trifle dubiously. "I--that is, I never was much on poetry, you understand. It wasn't exactly in my line. But never mind. How did it go? I'd like to hear it, tremendously." "I don't just recall the whole poem," she answered thoughtfully. "But I know part of it ran: '......This city now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning. Silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theaters, and temples lie Open unto the fields and to the sky All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.'" A moment she paused to think. The sun, lancing its long and level rays across the water and the vast dead city, irradiated her face. Instinctively, as she looked abroad over that wondrous panorama, she raised both bare arms; and, clad in the tiger-skin alone, stood for a little space like some Parsee priestess, sun-worshiping, on her tower of silence. Stern looked at her, amazed. Was this, could this indeed be the girl he had employed, in the old days--the other days of routine and of tedium, of orders and specifications and dry-as-dust dictation? As though from a strange spell he aroused himself. "The poem?" exclaimed he. "What next?" "Oh, that? I'd almost forgotten about that; I was dreaming. It goes this way, I think: 'Never did the sun more beautifully steep In his first splendor valley, rock, or hill, Ne'er saw I, never felt a calm so deep; The river glideth at his own sweet will. Dear God! the very houses seem asleep, And all this mighty heart is standing still!......'" She finished the tremendous classic almost in a whisper. They both stood silent a moment, gazing out together on that strange, inexplicable fulfilment of the poet's vision. Up to them, through the crystal morning air, rose a faint, small sound of waters, from the brooklet in the forest. The nesting birds, below, were busy "in song and solace"; and through the golden sky above, a swallow slanted on sharp wing toward some unseen, leafy goal. Far out upon the river, faint specks of white wheeled and hovered--a flock of swooping gulls, snowy and beautiful and free. Their pinions flashed, spiralled and sank to rest on the wide waters. Stern breathed a sigh. His right arm slipped about the sinuous, fur-robed body of the girl.