ow it seems to you."

"No," she answered, "you must tell me. What has happened to us, Adam?
Where are we, and why were we left?"

"God knows," he said reverently.

"Do you think it possible," she said slowly, "that we are dead?"

"Oh, I don't know!" he broke out, with a return to something of his
old childlike impatience. "Sometimes I think it is all a dream, and
directly I shall wake up and find myself in my dingy old law office.
But you are not a dream. These mountains are not a dream. Lassie
barking down below there is not a dream; and these callous spots on my
hands are real enough in all conscience, and no dream could last so
long. Sometimes I think we have been hypnotized and carried off and
left on an island somewhere. Sometimes--do you remember the man who
computed the vast number of 'mysterious disappearances,' and formed a
theory that the earth was being sorted out before the opening of the
last vial, or some such stuff? Do you think we can be simply another
disappearance?"

"I don't know," she said. "It seems easier to believe that, easier to
believe anything than that the whole world has disappeared."

"Then I think sometimes," he went on, "that there are evil powers,--I
know this sounds as if I had lost my mind, and maybe I have, I'm not
sure of anything,--but it seems as if there might be an explanation if
we believed in genii who have power over us. Perhaps you and I, who so
often found fault with the poor old earth, are being punished by
banishment from it. Perhaps we are being prepared for some great work.
I haven't very much religion, and yet I suppose I do believe in a
divine purpose back of things, a directing power that wastes nothing.
I have tried to think why this thing should come upon us, you and me,
of all the world; and while it seems an evil thing, a terrible and
overwhelming disaster, when I realize that it might have befallen me
alone, then just the fact that you are here makes it seem almost good.
Do you understand?"

"Yes," she said quickly. "I have felt just so. When, at first, I felt
as if I should curse God and die, I had only to remember you to fall
on my knees for thankfulness. Even if a dozen other people had been
left instead, no one would have understood as you have. Oh, I would
infinitely rather be alone with you than in the utter loneliness of
the society of a lot of men and women who would drive me mad with
their complaints and inefficiency. I don't know whether it is a