there are hundreds
of thousands of similar cases in England. God help the old if the young
forget their religion!"

For some reason I was unmoved by the outcry. It was no doubt owing to
the peculiar emotionless state that the germ induced in people. Jason
was roused. He paced to and fro in silence, with his brows contracted.
At length he stopped before me.

"Do you see any way out?"

"There will be no war between the young and the old," I replied. "In
another week everyone will get the germ and that will be the end of war
in every form."

He drew a chair and sat down before me.

"You don't understand," he said earnestly. "Perhaps you had a happy
childhood. I didn't. I know how some sons and daughters feel because I
suffered in that way. People are strangely blind to suffering unless
they have suffered themselves. When I was a young man, my father put me
in his office and gave me a clerk's wages. He kept me there for six
years at eighteen shillings a week. Whenever I made a suggestion
concerning the business he was careful to ridicule it. Whenever I tried
to break away and start on my own, he prevented it. There were a
thousand other things--ways in which he fettered me. My only sister he
kept at home to do the housework. He forbade her to marry. She and I
never had enough money to do anything, to go anywhere, or to buy
anything. Now, to be quite frank, I longed for him to die so that I
could get free. To me he was an ogre, a great merciless tyrant, a giant
with a club. Well, he died. When he was dead I felt what a man dying of
thirst in the desert must feel when he suddenly comes to a spring of
water. I recovered, and became what I am. My sister never recovered. She
had been suppressed beyond all the limits of elasticity. As far as her
body is concerned, it is alive. Her soul is dead."

He paused and looked at me meditatively.

"If your blue germ had come along then, Harden, I might---- Who knows? I
have often wondered why our pulpit religion ignores the crimes of
parents to their children. I'm not conventionally religious, but I seem
to remember that Christ indirectly said something pretty strong on the
subject. But the pulpit folk show a wonderful facility for ignoring the
awkward things Christ said. In about three years' time I'm going to turn
my guns on the Church. They've sneered at me too much."

"There will be a new Church by that time," murmured Sarakoff. "And no
guns."

Jason eyed the prostrate figu