Idris stood beside me, her dear hand locked in mine. Her face was radiant

with a smile.--"The sun is alone," she said, "but we are not. A strange

star, my Lionel, ruled our birth; sadly and with dismay we may look upon

the annihilation of man; but we remain for each other. Did I ever in the

wide world seek other than thee? And since in the wide world thou

remainest, why should I complain? Thou and nature are still true to me.

Beneath the shades of night, and through the day, whose garish light

displays our solitude, thou wilt still be at my side, and even Windsor will

not be regretted."

I had chosen night time for our journey to London, that the change and

desolation of the country might be the less observable. Our only surviving

servant drove us. We past down the steep hill, and entered the dusky avenue

of the Long Walk. At times like these, minute circumstances assume giant

and majestic proportions; the very swinging open of the white gate that

admitted us into the forest, arrested my thoughts as matter of interest; it

was an every day act, never to occur again! The setting crescent of the

moon glittered through the massy trees to our right, and when we entered

the park, we scared a troop of deer, that fled bounding away in the forest

shades. Our two boys quietly slept; once, before our road turned from the

view, I looked back on the castle. Its windows glistened in the moonshine,

and its heavy outline lay in a dark mass against the sky--the trees near

us waved a solemn dirge to the midnight breeze. Idris leaned back in the

carriage; her two hands pressed mine, her countenance was placid, she

seemed to lose the sense of what she now left, in the memory of what she

still possessed.

432

The Last Man