sort of thing. Some of us have a sort of fancy that in time we may
know enough to take over a little more than the ventilation and drains.
Knowledge keeps on piling up, you know. It keeps on growing. And there's
not the slightest hurry for a generation or so. Some day--some day, men
will live in a different way." He looked at Bindon and meditated.
"There'll be a lot of dying out before that day can come."

Bindon attempted to point out to this young man how silly and irrelevant
such talk was to a sick man like himself, how impertinent and uncivil it
was to him, an older man occupying a position in the official world of
extraordinary power and influence. He insisted that a doctor was paid to
cure people--he laid great stress on "_paid_"--and had no business to
glance even for a moment at "those other questions." "But we do," said
the young man, insisting upon facts, and Bindon lost his temper.

His indignation carried him home. That these incompetent impostors, who
were unable to save the life of a really influential man like himself,
should dream of some day robbing the legitimate property owners of
social control, of inflicting one knew not what tyranny upon the world.
Curse science! He fumed over the intolerable prospect for some time, and
then the pain returned, and he recalled the made-up prescription of the
first doctor, still happily in his pocket. He took a dose forthwith.

It calmed and soothed him greatly, and he could sit down in his most
comfortable chair beside his library (of phonographic records), and
think over the altered aspect of affairs. His indignation passed, his
anger and his passion crumbled under the subtle attack of that
prescription, pathos became his sole ruler. He stared about him, at his
magnificent and voluptuously appointed apartment, at his statuary and
discreetly veiled pictures, and all the evidences of a cultivated and
elegant wickedness; he touched a stud and the sad pipings of Tristan's
shepherd filled the air. His eye wandered from one object to another.
They were costly and gross and florid--but they were his. They presented
in concrete form his ideals, his conceptions of beauty and desire, his
idea of all that is precious in life. And now--he must leave it all like
a common man. He was, he felt, a slender and delicate flame, burning
out. So must all life flame up and pass, he thought. His eyes filled
with tears.

Then it came into his head that he was alone. Nobody cared for hi