"Why, like this. Maybe, after all, even the entire black race was swept out along with the others, too. Perhaps you and I were really the only two human beings left alive in the world." "Yes, but in that case, how--?" "How came _they_ here? Listen! May they not be the product of some entirely different process of development? May not some animal stock, under changed environment, have easily evolved them? May not some other semi-human or near-human race be now in process of arising, here on earth, eventually to conquer and subdue it all again?" For a moment she made no answer. Her breath came a little quickly as she tried to grasp the full significance of this tremendous concept. "In a million years, or so," the engineer continued, "may not the descendants of these things once more be men, or something very like them? In other words, aren't we possibly witnessing the recreation of the human type? Aren't _these_ the real pithecanthropi erecti, rather than the brown-skinned, reddish-haired creatures of the biological text-books? There's our problem!" She made no answer, but a sudden overmastering curiosity leaped into her eyes. "Let me see them for myself! I must! I will!" And before he could detain her, the girl had started back into the room whence they had come. "No, no! No, Beatrice!" he whispered, but she paid no heed to him. Across the littered floor she made her way. And by the time Stern could reach her side, she had set her face to the long, crumbling crack in the wall and with a burning eagerness was peering out into the forest. CHAPTER XXI EVE BECOMES AN AMAZON Stern laid a hand on her shoulder, striving to draw her away. This spectacle, it seemed to him, was no fit sight for her to gaze on. But she shrugged her shoulders as if to say: "I'm not a child! I'm your equal, now, and I must see!" So the engineer desisted. And he, too, set his eye to the twisting aperture. At sight of the narrow segment of forest visible through it, and of the several members of the Horde, a strong revulsion came upon him. Up welled a deep-seated love for the memory of the race of men and women as they once had been--the people of the other days. Stern almost seemed to behold them again, those tall, athletic, straight-limbed men; those lithe, deep-breasted women, fair-skinned and with luxuriant hair; all alike now plunged for a thousand years in the abyss of death and of eternal oblivion. Never before had the engineer realized how dear, how infinitely close to him his own race had been. Never had he so admired its diverse types of force and beauty, as now, now when all were but a dream. "Ugh!" thought he, disgusted beyond measure at the sight before him. "And all _these_ things are just as much alike as so many ants in a hill! I question if they've got the reason and the socialized intelligence of ants!"