She looked out upon a dim-lit street or court, at the blind end of which the house was apparently situated. Far off at the open end, across a distant highway where even at this hour passed a constant stream of traffic, flashed a narrow strip of lake; and above it, rising gigantic from the coruscating moon-path, lifted the satellite. She watched the remote flickering of the waves as they tossed back the broken bits of the light strewn along the path. Then she turned puzzled eyes on her companion. "That's Heaven," he said pointing a finger at the great flowing lunar disk. "There's a world that never caught the planet-cancer called Life, or if it ever suffered, it's cured. It's clean--burned clean by the sun and scoured clean by the airless zero of space. A dead world, and therefore not an unhappy one." The girl stared at him without comprehension. She murmured, "I don't understand, Nick." "Don't you, Pat?" He pointed again at the moon. "That's Heaven, the dead world, and this is Hell, the living one. Heaven and Hell swinging forever about their common center!" He gestured toward the sparkling moon-path on the water. "Look, Pat! The dead world strews flowers on the grave of the living one!" Some of his bitter ecstasy caught the girl; she felt his somber mood of exaltation. "I love you, Nick!" she whispered, pressing closely to him. "What difference does it make--our actions?" he queried. "There's the omen, that lifeless globe in the sky. Where we go, all humanity now living will follow before a century, and in a million years, the human race as well! What if we go a year or a million years before the rest? Will it make any difference in the end?" He looked down at her. "All we've been valuing here is hope. To the devil with hope! Let's have peace instead!" "I'm not afraid, Nick." "Nor I. And if we go, _he_ goes, and he's mortally afraid of death!" "Can he--prevent you?" "Not now! I'm the stronger now. For this time, I'm master." He turned again to stare at the glowing satellite as it rose imperceptibly from the horizon. "There's nothing to regret," he murmured, "except one thing--the loss of beauty. Beauty like that--and like you, Pat. That's bitterly hard to foreswear!" He leaned forward toward the remote disk of the moon; he spoke as if addressing it, in tones so low that the girl, pressed close to him, had to quiet the sound of her own breath to listen. He said: "Long miles above cloud-bank and blast, And many miles above the sea, I watch you rise majestically Feeling your chilly light at last-- Cold beauty in the way you cast Split silver fragments on the waves, As if this planet's life were past, And all men peaceful in their graves." Pat was silent for a moment as he paused, then she murmured a low phrase. "Oh, I love you, Nick!" she said. "And I you, dear," he responded. "Have we decided anything? Are we--going through with it?"