through a desolate landscape , the bombed-out wasteland of a ruined amusement park, littered with craters and corpses. (And she is herself and yet she is old.)She stops running and stands to look upon this destruction, this silent wreckage that mocks her and the whole rational universe as a madman would mock the innocent victim of his insane rage -- a rage that had knocked all the bric-a-brac from the shelves, shattering all the figurines into meaningless fragments. She sees in one of the craters the fragments of a body, not oozing blood through exposed flesh but showing instead a metal skeleton and clockwork innards; and upon the head of this mechanical corpse, a strange face that was strangely familiar; and then she is running running running...
...she is running, she knows not what from or what to but she is running -- through a bright blue summer afternoon, and people, people everywhere, a vast sea of people. (And she is herself and she is young again, thank God!) She hears her father speaking. She stops running and sees him upon a podium high above the crowd and it is as if he is being worshipped -- banners fly in the wind and there is a glow, a holy light about her father she had never known before. She hears him say, "...and Now that Day has Come, My Ratketeers -- the Dawning of a New World Order, the Day of the Ratketon -- and I, your Fearless Leader, am Here to Show you the Way to that Bright and Glorious Future!!" And with an awe-inspiring gesture he unveils -- a model train. Leoda looks about her for someone, anyone to explain to her what all this means and then she sees in the crowd a face, a face that teeters on the brink of remembrance; and then she is running running...
(And, for a moment, she is not running, and she is not herself. She is not young, neither is she old. She lives in a cage. She is a rat. She is slowly starving herself to death. She is pressing a lever, and the lever turns on a current; and the current stimulates a pleasure center in her brain. She is in ecstasy. Pressing a lever. Over and over and over again.)...she is running she is running she is running and she is not herself -- she is as young as creation and as old as time. Her lover, in pursuit, she romps before him, a chase across high mountain meadows, the impossibly full moon above singing a shrieking song, a song of Pan! -- of nymphs and satyrs and the endless chase, ending only in the sweet rough pleasures, the close hard embraces of Pan! -- They tumble together in cool green grasses; the song of joy takes on a piercing note; hard warmth meets soft yielding; and she sees appear before her -- brighter even than the shining glory of that impossible moon -- a city of lights descending out of the starry sky as a voice rings out, loud within her: "And this shall be a sign unto you and your descendants, Emily; for the stars in the sky in multitude and the sands by the sea innumerable, Forever and ever and ever and ever..."