lding
concrete and hid completely from the mayor's sight the crowd of young
faces, O'Brien, the Board of Aldermen, and the three million presidents
of the Board of Education. Only Helen remained and she came close to him
and laid her cool fingers on his aching head.

The mayor started up to find his wife bending over him.

"Edward," she was saying, "you promised me you would go to bed early."

"My dear," he replied, "I would have if I had not fallen asleep in my
chair. Have you had a pleasant evening at the theatre?"

"It is dreadful weather," she said, "and I have a bit of cold. I suppose
I shouldn't have gone out to-night, but it was the last chance, and you
know the children _would_ see 'Peter Pan.'"

XVIII

THE MARTIANS

The saddest thing about the recent announcement that there are no canals
on Mars is that Robert and I will now have so little to talk about.
Robert is my favourite waiter, and when he found out that I am what the
newspapers call a literary worker, he made up his mind that the ordinary
topics of light conversation would not do at all for me. After prolonged
resistance on my part he has succeeded in reducing our common interests
to two: the canals on Mars and French depopulation. Now and then I
venture to bring up the weather or the higher cost of living. Once I
asked him what he thought about the need of football reform. Once I
tried to drag in Mme. Steinheil. But Robert listens patiently, and when
I have concluded he calls my attention to the fact that in 1908 the
number of deaths in France exceeded the number of births by 12,000. When
the French population fails to stir me, he wonders whether the
inhabitants of Mars are really as intelligent as they are supposed to
be.

And yet it must have been I that first suggested Mars to him. Let me
confess. I do not love the Martian canals with the devouring passion
they have aroused in susceptible souls like Robert. But in a quieter way
the canals have been very dear to me. Their threatened loss comes like
the loss of an old friend; a distant friend whose face one has almost
forgotten and never hopes to see again, from whom one never hopes to
borrow, and to whom one never expects to lend, but who all the more
lives in the mind a remote, impersonal, and gentle influence. I am not
ashamed to admit that I have learned to care more for the Martian
canals than for any canals much closer to us. The Panama Canal will
probably cut in two the distan