u feel?"

"As if I had been drunk and suddenly had been made sober. I will leave
you. I want to think. I will go down to the country."

"And your papers?"

"We must have a new Press," he said, and left the room.

That same day the great railway accident occurred just outside London
that led to the death of sixty people, many of them Immortals. Its
effect on public imagination was profound. All dangerous enterprises
became invested with a terrible radiance. Men asked themselves if, in
face of a future of health, it was worth risking life in rashness of any
description, and gradually traffic came to a standstill. Long before the
germ had infected the whole populace all activities fraught with danger
had ceased. The coal mines were abandoned. The railways were silent. The
streets of London became empty of traffic.

Blue-stained people began to throng the streets of London in vast
masses, moving to and fro without aim or purpose, perfectly orderly,
vacant, lost--like Sarakoff's butterflies....

Thornduck came to see me one day when the reign of the germ was
practically absolute in London.

"They are wandering into the country in thousands," he remarked. "They
have lost all sense of home and possession. They are vague, trying to
form an ideal socialistic community. What a mess your germ is making of
life! They're not ready for it. The question is whether they will rouse
themselves to consider the food question."

"We need scarcely any food," I replied. "I've had nothing to eat
to-day."

"Nor I. But since we're still linked up to physical bodies we must
require some nourishment."

"I have eaten two biscuits and a little cheese in the last twenty-four
hours. Surely you don't think that food is to be a serious problem under
such circumstances?"

"It might be. You must remember that initiative is now destroyed in the
vast majority of people. They may permit themselves to die of inanition.
Can you say you have an appetite now?"

I reflected for some time, striving to recall the feeling of hunger
that belonged to the days of desire.

"No. I have no appetite."

"Think carefully. In place of appetite have you no tendencies?"

"I feel a kind of lethargy," I said at last. "I felt it yesterday and
to-day it is stronger."

"As if you wished to sleep?"

"Not exactly. But it is akin to that. I have some difficulty in keeping
my attention on things. There is a kind of pull within me away
from--away from reality."