Out through the doorway into the hall he made his way while the girl followed. As she went she gathered her wondrous veil of hair more closely about her.
In this universal disorganization, this wreck of all the world, how little the conventions counted!
Together, picking their way up the broken stairs, where now the rust-bitten steel showed through the corroded stone and cement in a thousand places, they cautiously climbed.
Here, spider-webs thickly shrouded the way, and had to be brushed down. There, still more bats bung and chippered in protest as the intruders passed.
A fluffy little white owl blinked at them from a dark niche; and, well toward the top of the climb, they flushed up a score of mud-swallows which had ensconced themselves comfortably along a broken balustrade.
At last, however, despite all unforeseen incidents of this sort, they reached the upper platform, nearly a thousand feet above the earth.
Out through the relics of the revolving door they crept, he leading, testing each foot of the way before the girl. They reached the narrow platform of red tiling that surrounded the tower.
Even here they saw with growing amazement that the hand of time and of this maddening mystery had laid its heavy imprint.
“Look!” he exclaimed, pointing. “What this all means we don't know yet. How long it's been we can't tell. But to judge by the appearance up here, it's even longer than I thought. See, the very tiles are cracked and crumbling.
“Tilework is usually considered highly recalcitrant--but this is gone. There's grass growing in the dust that's settled between the tiles. And--why, here's a young oak that's taken root and forced a dozen slabs out of place.”