‘That’s partly the trouble,’ she answered him seriously. ‘If people had been really, honestly scared when you were young we wouldn’t be so badly off today.’

His voice had more of an edge than he intended (‘When I was young!’), and he turned partly away from her as though to indicate the half-interest of an older person being gracious to a child: ‘I imagine we thought we were scared. I imagine all kids of sixteen – seventeen – think they’re scared. It’s part of a stage you go through, like being boy-crazy.’

‘I keep figuring how it will be.’ She spoke very softly, very clearly, to a point just past him on the wall. ‘Somehow I think of the churches as going first, before even the Empire State Building. And then all the big apartment houses by the river, slipping down slowly into the water with the people inside. And the schools, in the middle of Latin class maybe, while we’re reading Caesar.’ She brought her eyes to his face, looking at him in numb excitement. ‘Each time we begin a chapter in Caesar, I wonder if this won’t be the one we never finish. Maybe we in our Latin class will be the last people who ever read Caesar.’

‘That would be good news,’ he said lightly. ‘I used to hate Caesar.’

‘I suppose when you were young everyone hated Caesar,’ she said coolly.

He waited for a minute before he said, ‘I think it’s a little silly for you to fill your mind with all this morbid trash. Buy yourself a movie magazine and settle down.’

‘I’ll be able to get all the movie magazines I want,’ she said insistently. ‘The subways will crash through, you know, and the little magazine stands will all be squashed. You’ll be able to pick up all the candy bars you want, and magazines, and lipsticks and artificial flowers from the five-and-ten, and dresses lying in the street from all the big stores. And fur coats.’

‘I hope the liquor stores will break wide open,’ he said, beginning to feel impatient with her, ‘I’d walk in and help myself to a case of brandy and never worry about anything again.’

‘The office buildings will be just piles of broken stones,’ she said, her wide emphatic eyes still looking at him. ‘If only you could know exactly what minute it will come.’

‘I see,’ he said. ‘I go with the rest. I see.’

‘Things will be different afterward,’ she said. ‘Everything that makes the world like it is now will be gone. We’ll have new rules and new ways of living. Maybe there’ll be a law not to live in houses, so then no one can hide from anyone else, you see.’

‘Maybe there’ll be a law to keep all seventeen-year-old girls in school learning sense,’ he said, standing up.