"George Allen England - Darkness and Dawn" - читать интересную книгу автора (England George Allen)

Thus for a moment dazed and stunned she remained there, knowing not which way to turn nor what to
do. Then her terror-stricken gaze fell on the doorway leading from her outer office to the inner one, the
one where Stern had had his laboratory and his consultation-room.

This door now hung, a few worm-eaten planks and splintered bits of wood, barely supported by the
rusty hinges.

Toward it she staggered. About her she drew the sheltering masses of her hair, like a Godiva of another
age; and to her eyes, womanlike, the hot tears mounted. As she went, she cried in a voice of horror.

“Mr. Stern! Oh—Mr. Stern! Are—areyoudead, too? Youcan'tbe—it's too frightful!”

She reached the door. The mere touch of her outstretched hand disintegrated it. Down in a crumbling
mass it fell. Thick dust bellied up in a cloud, through which a single sun-ray that entered the cobwebbed
pane shot a radiant arrow.

Peering, hesitant, fearful of even greater terrors in that other room, Beatrice peered through this
dust-haze. A sick foreboding of evil possessed her at thought of what she might find there—yet more
afraid was she of what she knew lay behind her.

An instant she stood within the ruined doorway, her left hand resting on the moldy jam. Then, with a cry,
she started forward—a cry in which terror had given place to joy, despair to hope.

Forgotten now the fact that, save for the shrouding of her messy hair, she stood naked. Forgotten the
wreck, the desolation everywhere.

“Oh—thank Heaven!” gasped she.

There, in that inner office, half-rising from the wrack of many things that had been and were now no
more, her startled eyes beheld the figure of a man—of Allan Stern!

He lived!

At her he peered with eyes that saw not, yet; toward her he groped a vague, unsteady hand.

He lived!

Not quite alone in this world-ruin, not all alone was she!
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CHAPTER II. REALIZATION
The joy in Beatrice's eyes gave way to poignant wonder as she gazed on him. Could this behe?

Yes, well she knew it was. She recognized him even through the grotesquery of his clinging rags, even
behind the mask of a long, red, dusty beard and formidable mustache, even despite the wild and staring
incoherence of his whole expression.