"If you are not afraid," she said, "meet me at midnight by the statue of Fate in the great temple, for I would speak with you, Humphrey, where, if anywhere, we may be alone.""I will come, Yva."
"You know the road, and the gates are open, Humphrey."Then she gave me her hand to kiss and glided away.I returned to the others and we ate, somewhat sparingly, for we wished to save our food in case of need, and having drunk of the Life-water, were not hungry.Also we talked a little, but by common consent avoided the subject of the morrow and what it might bring forth.
We knew that terrible things were afoot, but lacking any knowledge of what these might be, thought it useless to discuss them.Indeed we were too depressed, so much so that even Bastin and Bickley ceased from arguing.The latter was so overcome by the exhibition of Oro's powers when he caused the pistol to leap into the air and discharge itself, that he could not even pluck up courage to laugh at the failure of Bastin's efforts to do justice on the old Super-man, or rather to prevent him from attempting a colossal crime.
At length we lay down on the couches to rest, Bastin remarking that he wished he could turn off the light, also that he did not in the least regret having tried to kill Oro.Sleep seemed to come to the others quickly, but I could only doze, to wake up from time to time.Of this I was not sorry, since whenever Idropped off dreams seemed to pursue me.For the most part they were of my dead wife.She appeared to be trying to console me for some loss, but the strange thing was that sometimes she spoke with her own voice and sometimes with Yva's, and sometimes looked at me with her own eyes and sometimes with those of Yva.Iremember nothing else about these dreams, which were very confused.
After one of them, the most vivid of all, I awoke and looked at my watch.It was half-past eleven, almost time for me to be starting.The other two seemed to be fast asleep.Presently Irose and crept down the court without waking them.Outside the portico, which by the way was a curious example of the survival of custom in architecture, since none was needed in that weatherless place, I turned to the right and followed the wide street to the temple enclosure.Through the pillared courts Iwent, my footsteps, although I walked as softly as I could, echoing loudly in that intense silence, through the great doors into the utter solitude of the vast and perfect fane.
Words can not tell the loneliness of that place.It flowed over me like a sea and seemed to swallow up my being, so that even the wildest and most dangerous beast would have been welcome as a companion.I was as terrified as a child that wakes to find itself deserted in the dark.Also an uncanny sense of terrors to come oppressed me, till I could have cried aloud if only to hear the sound of a mortal voice.Yonder was the grim statue of Fate, the Oracle of the Kings of the Sons of Wisdom, which was believed to bow its stony head in answer to their prayers.I ran to it, eager for its terrible shelter, for on either side of it were figures of human beings.Even their cold marble was company of a sort, though alas! over all frowned Fate.
Let anyone imagine himself standing alone beneath the dome of St.Paul's; in the centre of that cathedral brilliant with mysterious light, and stretched all about it a London that had been dead and absolutely unpeopled for tens of thousands of years.If he can do this he will gather some idea of my physical state.Let him add to his mind-picture a knowledge that on the following day something was to happen not unlike the end of the world, as prognosticated by the Book of Revelation and by most astronomers, and he will have some idea of my mental perturbations.Add to the mixture a most mystic yet very real love affair and an assignation before that symbol of the cold fate which seems to sway the universes down to the tiniest detail of individual lives, and he may begin to understand what I, Humphrey Arbuthnot, experienced during my vigil in this sanctuary of a vanished race.
It seemed long before Yva came, but at last she did come.Icaught sight of her far away beyond the temple gate, flitting through the unholy brightness of the pillared courts like a white moth at night and seeming quite as small.She approached; now she was as a ghost, and then drawing near, changed into a living, breathing, lovely woman.I opened my arms, and with something like a sob she sank into them and we kissed as mortals do.
"I could not come more quickly," she said."The Lord Oro needed me, and those calculations were long and difficult.Also twice he must visit the place whither we shall go tomorrow, and that took time.""Then it is close at hand?" I said.
"Humphrey, be not foolish.Do you not remember, who have travelled with him, that Oro can throw his soul afar and bring it back again laden with knowledge, as the feet of a bee are laden with golden dust? Well, he went and went again, and I must wait.
And then the robes and shields; they must be prepared by his arts and mine.Oh! ask not what they are, there is no time to tell, and it matters nothing.Some folk are wise and some are foolish, but all which matters is that within them flows the blood of life and that life breeds love, and that love, as I believe, although Oro does not, breeds immortality.And if so, what is Time but as a grain of sand upon the shore?""This, Yva; it is ours, who can count on nothing else.""Oh! Humphrey, if I thought that, no more wretched creature would breathe tonight upon this great world.""What do you mean?" I asked, growing fearful, more at her manner and her look than at her words.
