out of a cold and empty coffee cup.

"The world swarms with cramped and undeveloped lives," said Sir
Richmond. "Which amount to nothing. Which do not even represent
happiness. And which help to use up the resources, the fuel and surplus
energy of the world."

"I suppose they have a sort of liking for their lives," Miss Grammont
reflected.

"Does that matter? They do nothing to carry life on. They are just vain
repetitions--imperfect dreary, blurred repetitions of one common life.
All that they feel has been felt, all that they do has been done
better before. Because they are crowded and hurried and underfed and
undereducated. And as for liking their lives, they need never have had
the chance."

"How many people are there in the world?" she asked abruptly.

"I don't know. Twelve hundred, fifteen hundred millions perhaps."

"And in your world?"

"I'd have two hundred and fifty millions, let us say. At most. It would
be quite enough for this little planet, for a time, at any rate. Don't
you think so, doctor?"

"I don't know," said Dr. Martineau. "Oddly enough, I have never thought
about that question before. At least, not from this angle."

"But could you pick out two hundred and fifty million aristocrats?"
began Miss Grammont. "My native instinctive democracy--"

"Need not be outraged," said Sir Richmond. "Any two hundred and fifty
million would do, They'd be able to develop fully, all of them. As
things are, only a minority can do that. The rest never get a chance."

"That's what I always say," said Miss Seyffert.

"A New Age," said Dr. Martineau; "a New World. We may be coming to
such a stage, when population, as much as fuel, will be under a world
control. If one thing, why not the other? I admit that the movement of
thought is away from haphazard towards control--"

"I'm for control all the time," Miss Seyffert injected, following up her
previous success.

"I admit," the doctor began his broken sentence again with marked
patience, "that the movement of thought is away from haphazard towards
control--in things generally. But is the movement of events?"

"The eternal problem of man," said Sir Richmond. "Can our wills
prevail?"

There came a little pause.

Miss Grammont smiled an enquiry at Miss Seyffert. "If YOU are," said
Belinda.

"I wish I could imagine your world," said Miss Grammont, rising, "of two
hundred and fifty millions of fully developed human beings with room
to live and breathe in