She wouldn't turn. She wouldn't give them any intimation that she knew they were coming along the broad, glass-enclosed promenade. Rigidly, she held her mind away from the minds of the approaching gang of youngsters. She must keep right on looking at the city, as if they weren't there.

The city sprawled in the near distance before her, a vast reach of houses and buildings, their countless colorations queerly shadowed now and subdued, seemingly dead in the gathering twilight. Beyond, the green plain looked dark, and the normally blue, gushing water of the river that wound out of the city seemed blacker, shiningless, in that almost sunless world. Even the mountains on the remote, dimming horizon had taken on a somber hue, a grim moodiness that matched the melancholy in her own soul.

"Ya– a-ah! You better take a good look. It's your last."

The discordant voice rasped on her nerves like so much senseless noise. For a moment, so strong was the suggestion of completely unintelligible sounds, the meaning of the words did not penetrate to her consciousness. And then, in spite of herself, she jerked around to face him.

"My last! What do you mean?"

Instantly, she regretted her action. Davy Dinsmore and his cronies stood there less than a dozen feet away. He had on long, thin, green trousers, and a yellow shirt open at the neck. His little boy's face with its recently acquired "I'm-a-tough-guy" expression, and his lips twisted into a sneer, made her wonder again what had happened to him. But in the days when they had carried on a wary friendship, she had told him she would never read his mind without his permission. And she still felt bound by the promise though he had changed meanwhile to – this! What he was now she didn't really want to see. The others she had always ignored.

It was a long time, months and months, and to an extent years, since she had cut herself off from mental contact with the stream of human thoughts, human hopes and human hates that made a hell of the palace atmosphere. Better to scorn him, also. She turned her back on him. She had barely done so when there was his jangling voice again: