se steadily towards two hundred miles an hour. And by the time this
revolution was accomplished, a parallel revolution had transformed the
ever-growing cities. Before the development of practical science the
fogs and filth of Victorian times vanished. Electric heating replaced
fires (in 2013 the lighting of a fire that did not absolutely consume
its own smoke was made an indictable nuisance), and all the city ways,
all public squares and places, were covered in with a recently invented
glass-like substance. The roofing of London became practically
continuous. Certain short-sighted and foolish legislation against tall
buildings was abolished, and London, from a squat expanse of petty
houses--feebly archaic in design--rose steadily towards the sky. To the
municipal responsibility for water, light, and drainage, was added
another, and that was ventilation.

But to tell of all the changes in human convenience that these two
hundred years brought about, to tell of the long foreseen invention of
flying, to describe how life in households was steadily supplanted by
life in interminable hotels, how at last even those who were still
concerned in agricultural work came to live in the towns and to go to
and fro to their work every day, to describe how at last in all England
only four towns remained, each with many millions of people, and how
there were left no inhabited houses in all the countryside: to tell all
this would take us far from our story of Denton and his Elizabeth. They
had been separated and reunited, and still they could not marry. For
Denton--it was his only fault--had no money. Neither had Elizabeth until
she was twenty-one, and as yet she was only eighteen. At twenty-one all
the property of her mother would come to her, for that was the custom of
the time. She did not know that it was possible to anticipate her
fortune, and Denton was far too delicate a lover to suggest such a
thing. So things stuck hopelessly between them. Elizabeth said that she
was very unhappy, and that nobody understood her but Denton, and that
when she was away from him she was wretched; and Denton said that his
heart longed for her day and night. And they met as often as they could
to enjoy the discussion of their sorrows.

They met one day at their little seat upon the flying stage. The precise
site of this meeting was where in Victorian times the road from
Wimbledon came out upon the common. They were, however, five hundred
feet above t