The World Set Free · II · § II (2/2)

She did not cry out to him again, but she crept a little nearer. A strange surmise made her eyes dilate. With a painful wrench she pulled herself up so that she could see completely over the intervening lumps of smashed-up masonry. Her hand touched something wet, and after one convulsive movement she became rigid.

It was not a whole man there; it was a piece of a man, the head and shoulders of a man that trailed down into a ragged darkness and a pool of shining black.⁠ ⁠…

And even as she stared the mound above her swayed and crumbled and a rush of hot water came pouring over her. Then it seemed to her that she was dragged downward.⁠ ⁠…