eather, the great country-houses, the cozy farms, the pleasure-seekers
upon the links.

The end of the world! One had often heard the words, but the idea that
they could ever have an immediate practical significance, that it should
not be at some vague date, but now, to-day, that was a tremendous, a
staggering thought. We were all struck solemn and waited in silence for
Challenger to continue. His overpowering presence and appearance lent
such force to the solemnity of his words that for a moment all the
crudities and absurdities of the man vanished, and he loomed before us as
something majestic and beyond the range of ordinary humanity. Then to
me, at least, there came back the cheering recollection of how twice
since we had entered the room he had roared with laughter. Surely, I
thought, there are limits to mental detachment. The crisis cannot be so
great or so pressing after all.

"You will conceive a bunch of grapes," said he, "which are covered by
some infinitesimal but noxious bacillus. The gardener passes it through
a disinfecting medium. It may be that he desires his grapes to be
cleaner. It may be that he needs space to breed some fresh bacillus less
noxious than the last. He dips it into the poison and they are gone.
Our Gardener is, in my opinion, about to dip the solar system, and the
human bacillus, the little mortal vibrio which twisted and wriggled upon
the outer rind of the earth, will in an instant be sterilized out of
existence."

Again there was silence. It was broken by the high trill of the
telephone-bell.

"There is one of our bacilli squeaking for help," said he with a grim
smile. "They are beginning to realize that their continued existence is
not really one of the necessities of the universe."

He was gone from the room for a minute or two. I remember that none of
us spoke in his absence. The situation seemed beyond all words or
comments.

"The medical officer of health for Brighton," said he when he returned.
"The symptoms are for some reason developing more rapidly upon the sea
level. Our seven hundred feet of elevation give us an advantage. Folk
seem to have learned that I am the first authority upon the question. No
doubt it comes from my letter in the Times. That was the mayor of a
provincial town with whom I talked when we first arrived. You may have
heard me upon the telephone. He seemed to put an entirely inflated value
upon his own life. I helped him to readj