hould people be made unhappy?"

"I wonder," said Graham thoughtfully. "But there are a great many things
I want to know."

Lincoln, who had stood watching Graham's face throughout the
conversation, intervened. "There are others," he said in an undertone.

The Surveyor-General of schools gesticulated himself away. "Perhaps,"
said Lincoln, intercepting a casual glance, "you would like to know some
of these ladies?"

The daughter of the Manager of the Piggeries was a particularly charming
little person with red hair and animated blue eyes. Lincoln left him
awhile to converse with her, and she displayed herself as quite an
enthusiast for the "dear old days," as she called them, that had seen the
beginning of his trance. As she talked she smiled, and her eyes smiled in
a manner that demanded reciprocity.

"I have tried," she said, "countless times--to imagine those old romantic
days. And to you--they are memories. How strange and crowded the world
must seem to you! I have seen photographs and pictures of the past, the
little isolated houses built of bricks made out of burnt mud and all
black with soot from your fires, the railway bridges, the simple
advertisements, the solemn savage Puritanical men in strange black coats
and those tall hats of theirs, iron railway trains on iron bridges
overhead, horses and cattle, and even dogs running half wild about the
streets. And suddenly, you have come into this!"

"Into this," said Graham.

"Out of your life--out of all that was familiar."

"The old life was not a happy one," said Graham. "I do not regret that."

She looked at him quickly. There was a brief pause. She sighed
encouragingly. "No?"

"No," said Graham. "It was a little life--and unmeaning. But this--We
thought the world complex and crowded and civilised enough. Yet I
see--although in this world I am barely four days old--looking back on my
own time, that it was a queer, barbaric time--the mere beginning of this
new order. The mere beginning of this new order. You will find it hard to
understand how little I know."

"You may ask me what you like," she said, smiling at him.

"Then tell me who these people are. I'm still very much in the dark about
them. It's puzzling. Are there any Generals?"

"Men in hats and feathers?"

"Of course not. No. I suppose they are the men who control the great
public businesses. Who is that distinguished looking man?"

"That? He's a most important officer. That is Morden. He