The stone was living. Yes—the stone was living.... The stones of the City of the Dead were coming to life. The shock of extreme violence shook the earth on which Maria was standing. Rumbling of falling stones, trickling, silence. Maria was pitched against the stone wall. But the wall moved behind her. Maria shrieked. She threw up her arms and raced onwards. She stumbled over stones which lay across her way, but she did not fall. She did not know what was happening but the rustle of mystery which the storm drives along before it—the proclamation of a great evil, hung in the air above her, driving her forward. There—a light in front of her! She ran towards it. An arched vault.... Great burning candles.... Yes, she knew the place. She had often stood here and spoken to those whom she called “brothers”.... Who, but she, had the right to light these candles? For whom had they burnt to-day? The flames blew sideways in a violent draught of air; the wax dropped. Maria seized a candle and ran on with it. She came to the background of the arched vault. A coat lay on the floor. None of her brothers wore such a coat over his blue linen uniform. She bent down. She saw, in the thousand-year-old dust of the arched vault, a trail of dark drops. She stretched out her hand and touched one of the drops. The tip of her finger was dyed red. She straightened herself up and closed her eyes. She staggered a little and a smile passed over her face as though she hoped she were dreaming. “Dear God, I pray Thee, bide with me, take care of me.... Amen....” She leant her head against the stone wall. The wall quaked. Maria looked right up. In the dark, black vaulting of the stone roof above her, there gaped a winding cleft. What did that mean...? What was there—above her? Up there were the mole-tunnels of the underground railway. What was happening up there—? It sounded as though three thousand giants were playing nine-pins with iron mountains, throwing them, one against the other, amid yells.... The cleft gaped wider. The air was filled with dust. But it was not dust. It was ground stone. The structure of the City of the Dead quaked right down to the centre of the earth. It was as if a mighty fist had suddenly opened a sluice—but, instead of water, a maelstrom of stones hurtled from the dammed-up bed—blocks, mortar, crumbles, stone-splinters, ruins poured down from the arch—a curtain of stones—a hail of stones. And above the falling and the smashing was the power of a thunder which was roaring, and roaring long and resonantly, through the destruction. A current of air, an irresistible whirl, swept the girl aside like a blade of straw. The skeletons rose up from the niches: bones rose up erect and skulls rolled! Doomsday seemed to be breaking over the thousand-year-old City of the Dead. But above the great Metropolis the monster-voice was still howling and howling.