t me. Good-day, sir," he said, taking off his hat
with a deep and jerky bow. "I am afraid we must continue our
conversation another time."

IV

THE EPISODE OF THE BABY

As soon as I turned away, rather horrified, from the merry proceedings
of the Mutual Extermination Club, I seemed to be in England, or
perhaps in America. At all events I was walking along a dusty highway
in the midst of an inquisitive crowd. In front of me half-a-dozen
members of the International Police Force (their tunics and boots gave
me to understand their quality) were dragging along a woman who held a
baby in her arms. A horror-struck and interested multitude surged
behind, and rested only when the woman was taken into a large and
disgusting edifice with iron gates. Aided by my distinguished
appearance and carriage, I succeeded after some difficulty in
persuading the Chief Gaoler to let me visit the cell where the mother
was lodged, previous to undergoing an execution which would doubtless
be as unpleasant as prolonged. I found a robust, apple-cheeked woman,
very clean and neat, despite her forlorn condition and the rough
handling the guards had used to her. She confessed to me with tears
that she had been in her day a provincial courtesan, and that she had
been overcome by desire to have a child, "just to see what it was
like." She had therefore employed all imaginable shifts to avoid being
injected with Smithia, and had fled with an old admirer to a lonely
cave, where she had brought forth her child. "And a pretty boy too,"
she added, wringing her hands, "and only fourteen months old."

She was so heartbroken that I did not like to ask her any more
questions till she had recovered, for fear her answers should be
unintelligible. Finally, as I desired to learn matters that were of
common knowledge to the rest of the world, and was not anxious to
arouse suspicion, I represented myself as a cultured foreigner who had
just been released from a _manicomio_, and was therefore naturally in
a state of profound ignorance on all that appertained to Modern
History. I felt indeed that I would never have a better chance of
gathering information than from conversation with this solitary woman.
It would be her pleasure, not her duty, to instruct me.

So I began by asking how the diminishing numbers of the military could
keep a sufficient watch, and how it was that every one submitted so
meekly to the proclamation. She answered that the police rec