Book Three The Afterglow Chapter 34 History and Roses

Allan sat writing in his library. Ten years had now slipped past since the last of the Folk had been brought to the surface and the ancient settlement in the bowels of the earth forever abandoned. Heavily sprinkled with gray, the man's hair showed the stress of time and labors incredible.

Lines marked his face with the record of their character-building, even as his rapid pen traced on white paper the all but completing history of the new world whereat he had been laboring so long.

Through the open window, where the midsummer breeze swayed the silken curtains, drifted a hum from the long file of bee-hives in the garden. Farther away sounded the comfortable gossip of hens as they breasted their soft feathers into the dust-baths behind the stables. A dog barked.

Came voices from without. Along the street growled a motor. Laughter of children echoed from the playground. Allan ceased writing a moment, with a smile, and gazed about him as though waking from a dream.

"Can this be true?" he murmured. "After having worked over the records of the earlier time they still seem the reality and this the dream!"

On the garden-path sounded footfalls. Then the voice of Beatrice calling: "Come out, boy! See my new roses--just opened this morning!"

He got up and went to the window. She--matronly now and of ampler bosom, yet still very beautiful to look upon--was standing there by the rose-tree, scissors in hand.