the
near approach of death, effected even that. If he was at all exclusive
about Denton, if he should display the slightest distrust, if he
attempted any specific exclusion of that young man, she
might--_misunderstand_. Yes--she should have her Denton still. His
magnanimity must go even to that. He tried to think only of Elizabeth in
the matter.

He rose with a sigh, and limped across to the telephonic apparatus that
communicated with his solicitor. In ten minutes a will duly attested and
with its proper thumb-mark signature lay in the solicitor's office three
miles away. And then for a space Bindon sat very still.

Suddenly he started out of a vague reverie and pressed an investigatory
hand to his side.

Then he jumped eagerly to his feet and rushed to the telephone. The
Euthanasia Company had rarely been called by a client in a greater
hurry.

So it came at last that Denton and his Elizabeth, against all hope,
returned unseparated from the labour servitude to which they had fallen.
Elizabeth came out from her cramped subterranean den of metal-beaters
and all the sordid circumstances of blue canvas, as one comes out of a
nightmare. Back towards the sunlight their fortune took them; once the
bequest was known to them, the bare thought of another day's hammering
became intolerable. They went up long lifts and stairs to levels that
they had not seen since the days of their disaster. At first she was
full of this sensation of escape; even to think of the underways was
intolerable; only after many months could she begin to recall with
sympathy the faded women who were still below there, murmuring scandals
and reminiscences and folly, and tapping away their lives.

Her choice of the apartments they presently took expressed the vehemence
of her release. They were rooms upon the very verge of the city; they
had a roof space and a balcony upon the city wall, wide open to the sun
and wind, the country and the sky.

And in that balcony comes the last scene in this story. It was a summer
sunsetting, and the hills of Surrey were very blue and clear. Denton
leant upon the balcony regarding them, and Elizabeth sat by his side.
Very wide and spacious was the view, for their balcony hung five hundred
feet above the ancient level of the ground. The oblongs of the Food
Company, broken here and there by the ruins--grotesque little holes and
sheds--of the ancient suburbs, and intersected by shining streams of
sewage, passed at last