"She wants you to get out, Nanette."
"Shall I, Alan?"
"Yes. Help her, Ed."
I guided Nanette. Lea plucked at Alan. He put the lights of the car out and locked it. His fingers were trembling.
"You walk with Lea, Nanette. Let her guide you. We'll follow. See what she wants to do."
Four of us; unnoticed by the great, sleeping city, all unaware of us. And what would it have cared?
We crossed the avenue; plunged into the shadows of the park. To the east the leaden sky over the house-tops was brightening with the coming dawn.
We crouched in the shrubbery by the edge of a path. Trees were over us; a lake near by; a winding park roadway off there with lights along it; the shadowy building of the Museum at the edge of the park was in the distance.
Lea had marked well this landscape! It was familiar to her, as it was to Alan and me, who had been here so often, and had seen the vision of it on the screen last night. This open spread of lawn here, with the lake near it, this path bordering it.
My mind swung back. A forest glade was here, three hundred years ago. Three thousand years ago, what? A virgin forest? And three hundred thousand years ago? Primitive man, hiding here—as we of 1945 now were crouching?