Don seemed to be somewhere, felt rather than heard, sensed, not seen. And instead of ruins, the high white walls and rising towers surrounded by gardens, fountains, and through the gardens a stream of clear water, soft with the pads of giant water lilies, trailing like glass under the moonlight and sympathetic shadows of leaves.
"Don! You knew what real living was in your youth. It was way, way back in time. Didn't you? And only if you're really living do you know where you're going, and you knew, didn't you? You gave up the machines, and went on to freedom. You escaped the confining flesh that can be caught up in war, and in hopeless peonage to the radios and teevee and radar and thundering jets that drown out the song of real life, and a horde of cunningly made, treacherous machines—"
"Madeleine. Join us—the way we are now. You can do it—"
"I—I can't see you, Don."
"You don't have to. You just think about it and join us, all of us—"
"Just—just a spirit of some kind, Don—is that it?"
"Yes, yes—something like that! You can't explain it! Just do it!"
It was too late, she knew that now. "We're old, too old, where I come from, Don. When I was very young, I might have done it." Only the wonder-filled child can go through the looking glass and—stay.
And he knew she was right, that she was too old. But the old man had promised her a moment of joy. She suddenly saw him—Don—the bright, strong man waiting across the stream. "It's what you brought to me," he said softly. "When we were young we looked this way—and we were real."
She moved toward the water and her arms lifted to him. At first she couldn't recognize the woman who bathed there. From the water's surface a slight vapor drifted, and she saw the wet gleam of naked arms as they lowered and raised and the water shone on the pale loveliness of unashamed nakedness. And then she knew that the woman there, her hair floating over the water, was Madeleine. She whispered her own name.