uded
silence was eloquent of imprisonment!

It came into Graham's mind with irresistible conviction that this series
of magnificent impressions was a dream. He tried to shut his eyes and
succeeded, but that time-honoured device led to no awakening.

Presently he began to touch and examine all the unfamiliar appointments
of the two small rooms in which he found himself.

In a long oval panel of mirror he saw himself and stopped astonished. He
was clad in a graceful costume of purple and bluish white, with a little
greyshot beard trimmed to a point, and his hair, its blackness streaked
now with bands of grey, arranged over his forehead in an unfamiliar but
graceful manner. He seemed a man of five-and-forty perhaps. For a moment
he did not perceive this was himself.

A flash of laughter came with the recognition. "To call on old Warming
like this!" he exclaimed, "and make him take me out to lunch!"

Then he thought of meeting first one and then another of the few
familiar acquaintances of his early manhood, and in the midst of his
amusement realised that every soul with whom he might jest had died
many score of years ago. The thought smote him abruptly and keenly;
he stopped short, the expression of his face changed to a white
consternation.

The tumultuous memory of the moving platforms and the huge facade of
that wonderful street reasserted itself. The shouting multitudes came
back clear and vivid, and those remote, inaudible, unfriendly councilors
in white. He felt himself a little figure, very small and ineffectual,
pitifully conspicuous. And all about him, the world was--strange.

CHAPTER VII. IN THE SILENT ROOMS

Presently Graham resumed his examination of his apartments. Curiosity
kept him moving in spite of his fatigue. The inner room, he perceived,
was high, and its ceiling dome shaped', with an oblong aperture in the
centre, opening into a funnel in which a wheel of broad vans seemed to
be rotating, apparently driving the air up the shaft. The faint humming
note of its easy motion was the only clear sound in that quiet place. As
these vans sprang up one after the other, Graham could get transient
glimpses of the sky. He was surprised to see a star.

This drew his attention to the fact that the bright lighting of these
rooms was due to a multitude of very faint glow lamps set about the
cornices. There were no windows. And he began to recall that along
all the vast chambers and passages he had travers