m all."

"Yes," she said slowly; "and how foolish our human distinctions
seem--now," looking down to the great dead city stretched below,
swimming in unlightened shadows.

"Yes--I was not--human, yesterday," he said.

She looked at him. "And your people were not my people," she said; "but
today----" She paused. He was a man,--no more; but he was in some larger
sense a gentleman,--sensitive, kindly, chivalrous, everything save his
hands and--his face. Yet yesterday----

"Death, the leveler!" he muttered.

"And the revealer," she whispered gently, rising to her feet with great
eyes. He turned away, and after fumbling a moment sent a rocket into the
darkening air. It arose, shrieked, and flew up, a slim path of light,
and scattering its stars abroad, dropped on the city below. She scarcely
noticed it. A vision of the world had risen before her. Slowly the
mighty prophecy of her destiny overwhelmed her. Above the dead past
hovered the Angel of Annunciation. She was no mere woman. She was
neither high nor low, white nor black, rich nor poor. She was primal
woman; mighty mother of all men to come and Bride of Life. She looked
upon the man beside her and forgot all else but his manhood, his strong,
vigorous manhood--his sorrow and sacrifice. She saw him glorified. He
was no longer a thing apart, a creature below, a strange outcast of
another clime and blood, but her Brother Humanity incarnate, Son of God
and great All-Father of the race to be.

He did not glimpse the glory in her eyes, but stood looking outward
toward the sea and sending rocket after rocket into the unanswering
darkness. Dark-purple clouds lay banked and billowed in the west. Behind
them and all around, the heavens glowed in dim, weird radiance that
suffused the darkening world and made almost a minor music. Suddenly, as
though gathered back in some vast hand, the great cloud-curtain fell
away. Low on the horizon lay a long, white star--mystic, wonderful! And
from it fled upward to the pole, like some wan bridal veil, a pale, wide
sheet of flame that lighted all the world and dimmed the stars.

In fascinated silence the man gazed at the heavens and dropped his
rockets to the floor. Memories of memories stirred to life in the dead
recesses of his mind. The shackles seemed to rattle and fall from his
soul. Up from the crass and crushing and cringing of his caste leaped
the lone majesty of kings long dead. He arose within the shadows, tall,
straight, and