roes were coming,
Helen Wotton had warned the people of their coming, and he was Master of
the Earth. Each of these facts seemed struggling for complete possession
of his thoughts. They protruded from a background of swarming halls,
elevated passages, rooms jammed with ward leaders in council,
kinematograph and telephone rooms, and windows looking out on a seething
sea of marching men. The men in yellow, and men whom he fancied were
called Ward Leaders, were either propelling him forward or following him
obediently; it was hard to tell. Perhaps they were doing a little of
both. Perhaps some power unseen and unsuspected propelled them all. He
was aware that he was going to make a proclamation to the People of the
Earth, aware of certain grandiose phrases floating in his mind as the
thing he meant to say. Many little things happened, and then he found
himself with the man in yellow entering a little room where this
proclamation of his was to be made.

This room was grotesquely latter-day in its appointments. In the centre
was a bright oval lit by shaded electric lights from above. The rest was
in shadow, and the double finely fitting doors through which he came from
the swarming Hall of the Atlas made the place very still. The dead thud
of these as they closed behind him, the sudden cessation of the tumult in
which he had been living for hours, the quivering circle of light, the
whispers and quick noiseless movements of vaguely visible attendants in
the shadows, had a strange effect upon Graham. The huge ears of a
phonographic mechanism gaped in a battery for his words, the black eyes
of great photographic cameras awaited his beginning, beyond metal rods
and coils glittered dimly, and something whirled about with a droning
hum. He walked into the centre of the light, and his shadow drew together
black and sharp to a little blot at his feet.

The vague shape of the thing he meant to say was already in his mind. But
this silence, this isolation, the withdrawal from that contagious crowd,
this audience of gaping, glaring machines, had not been in his
anticipation. All his supports seemed withdrawn together; he seemed to
have dropped into this suddenly, suddenly to have discovered himself. In
a moment he was changed. He found that he now feared to be inadequate, he
feared to be theatrical, he feared the quality of his voice, the quality
of his wit; astonished, he turned to the man in yellow with a
propitiatory gesture. "For