A woman leaned wearily against the signpost, her head bowed motionless on her lace and silken bosom.  Before her stood a street car, silent, and within—­but the messenger but glanced and hurried on.  A grimy newsboy sat in the gutter with the “last edition” in his uplifted hand:  “Danger!” screamed its black headlines.  “Warnings wired around the world.  The Comet’s tail sweeps past us at noon.  Deadly gases expected.  Close doors and windows.  Seek the cellar.”  The messenger read and staggered on.  Far out from a window above, a girl lay with gasping face and sleevelets on her arms.  On a store step sat a little, sweet-faced girl looking upward toward the skies, and in the carriage by her lay—­but the messenger looked no longer.  The cords gave way—­the terror burst in his veins, and with one great, gasping cry he sprang desperately forward and ran,—­ran as only the frightened run, shrieking and fighting the air until with one last wail of pain he sank on the grass of Madison Square and lay prone and still.

When he rose, he gave no glance at the still and silent forms on the benches, but, going to a fountain, bathed his face; then hiding himself in a corner away from the drama of death, he quietly gripped himself and thought the thing through:  The comet had swept the earth and this was the end.  Was everybody dead?  He must search and see.

He knew that he must steady himself and keep calm, or he would go insane.  First he must go to a restaurant.  He walked up Fifth Avenue to a famous hostelry and entered its gorgeous, ghost-haunted halls.  He beat back the nausea, and, seizing a tray from dead hands, hurried into the street and ate ravenously, hiding to keep out the sights.

“Yesterday, they would not have served me,” he whispered, as he forced the food down.

Then he started up the street,—­looking, peering, telephoning, ringing alarms; silent, silent all.  Was nobody—­nobody—­he dared not think the thought and hurried on.

Suddenly he stopped still.  He had forgotten.  My God!  How could he have forgotten?  He must rush to the subway—­then he almost laughed.  No—­a car; if he could find a Ford.  He saw one.  Gently he lifted off its burden, and took his place on the seat.  He tested the throttle.  There was gas.  He glided off, shivering, and drove up the street.  Everywhere stood, leaned, lounged, and lay the dead, in grim and awful silence.  On he ran past an automobile, wrecked and overturned; past another, filled with a gay party whose smiles yet lingered on their death-struck lips; on past crowds and groups of cars, pausing by dead policemen; at 42nd Street he had to detour to Park Avenue to avoid the dead congestion.  He came back on Fifth Avenue at 57th and flew past the Plaza and by the park with its hushed babies and silent throng, until as he was rushing past 72nd Street he heard a sharp cry, and saw a living form leaning wildly out an upper window.  He gasped.  The human voice sounded in his ears like the voice of God.