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dressed exactly like the traditional Chaucer, including even the laurel

wreath.

"Who is that?" he asked almost involuntarily

"The Bishop of London," said Lincoln.

"No--the other, I mean."

"Poet Laureate."

"You still?"

"He doesn't make poetry, of course. He's a cousin of Wotton--one of

the Councillors. But he's one of the Red Rose Royalists--a delightful

club--and they keep up the tradition of these things."

"Asano told me there was a King."

"The King doesn't belong. They had to expel him. It's the Stuart blood,

I suppose; but really--"

"Too much?"

"Far too much."

Graham did not quite follow all this, but it seemed part of the

general inversion of the new age. He bowed condescendingly to his first

introduction. It was evident that subtle distinctions of class prevailed

even in this assembly, that only to a small proportion of the guests,

to an inner group, did Lincoln consider it appropriate to introduce him.

This first introduction was the Master Aeronaut, a man whose suntanned

face contrasted oddly with the delicate complexions about him. Just

at present his critical defection from the Council made him a very

important person indeed.

His manner contrasted very favourably, according to Graham's ideas, with

the general bearing. He made a few commonplace remarks, assurances of

loyalty and frank inquiries about the Master's health. His manner was

breezy, his accent lacked the easy staccato of latter-day English. He

made it admirably clear to Graham that he was a bluff "aerial dog"--he

used that phrase--that there was no nonsense about him, that he was

a thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn't

profess to know much, and that what he did not know was not worth

knowing He made a manly bow, ostentatiously free from obsequiousness and

passed.

"I am glad to see that type endures," said Graham

"Phonographs and kinematographs," said Lincoln, a little spitefully. "He

has studied from the life." Graham glanced at the burly form again. It

was oddly reminiscent.

"As a matter of fact we bought him," said Lincoln. "Partly. And partly

he was afraid of Ostrog Everything rested with him."

He turned sharply to introduce the Surveyor-General of the Public School

Trust. This person was a willowy figure in a blue-grey academic gown, he

beamed down upon Graham through _pince-nez_ of a Victorian pattern, and

illustrated his remarks by gestures of a beautifully manicured hand.

Graham was immediately interested in this gentleman's functions, and

asked him a number of singularly direct questions. The Surveyor-General

seemed quietly amused at the Master's fundamental bluntness. He was a

little vague as to the monopoly of education his Company possessed; it

was done by contract with the syndicate that ran the numerous London

Municipalities, but he waxed enthusiastic over educational progress

since the Victorian times. "We have conquered Cram," he said,

"completely conquered Cram--there is not an examination left in the

world. Aren't you glad?"

"How do you get the work done?" asked Graham.

"We make it attractive--as attractive as possible. And if it does not

attract then--we let it go. We cover an immense field."

He proceeded to details, and they had a lengthy conversation. The

Surveyor-General mentioned the names of Pestalozzi and Froebel

with profound respect, although he displayed no intimacy with their

epoch-making works. Graham learnt that University Extension still

existed in a modified form. "There is a certain type of girl, for

example," said the Surveyor-General, dilating with a sense of his

usefulness, "with a perfect passion for severe studies--when they are

not too difficult you know. We cater for them by the thousand. At

this moment," he said with a Napoleonic touch, "nearly five hundred

phonographs are lecturing in different parts of London on the influence

exercised by Plato and Swift on the love affairs of Shelley, Hazlitt,

and Burns. And afterwards they write essays on the lectures, and the

names in order of merit are put in conspicuous places. You see how your

little germ has grown? The illiterate middle-class of your days has

quite passed away."

"About the public elementary schools," said Graham. "Do you control

them?"

The Surveyor-General did, "entirely." Now, Graham, in his later

democratic days, had taken a keen interest in these and his questioning

quickened. Certain casual phrases that had fallen from the old man

with whom he had talked in the darkness recurred to him. The

Surveyor-General, in effect, endorsed the old man's words. "We have

abolished Cram," he said, a phrase Graham was beginning to interpret

as the abolition of all sustained work. The Surveyor-General became

sentimental. "We try and make the elementary schools very pleasant for

the little children. They will have to work so soon. Just a few simple

principles--obedience--industry."

"You teach them very little?"

"Why should we? It only leads to trouble and discontent. We amuse them.

Even as it is--there are troubles--agitations. Where the labourers get

the ideas, one cannot tell. They tell one another. There are socialistic

dreams--anarchy even! Agitators will get to work among them. I take

it--I have always taken it--that my foremost duty is to fight against

popular discontent. Why should people be made unhappy?"

"I wonder," said Graham thoughtfully. "But there are a great many things

I want to know."

Lincoln, who had stood watching Graham's face throughout the

conversation, intervened. "There are others," he said in an undertone.

The Surveyor-General of schools gesticulated himself away. "Perhaps,"

said Lincoln, intercepting a casual glance, "you would like to know some

of these ladies?"

The daughter of the Manager of the Piggeries of the European Food Trust

was a particularly charming little person with red hair and animated

blue eyes. Lincoln left him awhile to converse with her, and she

displayed herself as quite an enthusiast for the "dear old times,"

as she called them, that had seen the beginning of his trance. As

she talked she smiled, and her eyes smiled in a manner that demanded

reciprocity.

"I have tried," she said, "countless times--to imagine those old

romantic days. And to you they are memories. How strange and crowded the

world must seem to you! I have seen photographs and pictures of the old

times, the little isolated houses built of bricks made out of burnt mud

and all black with soot from your fires, the railway bridges, the simple

advertisements, the solemn savage Puritanical men in strange black

coats and those tall hats of theirs, iron railway trains on iron bridges

overhead, horses and cattle, and even dogs running half wild about the

streets. And suddenly, you have come into this!"

"Into this," said Graham.

"Out of your life--out of all that was familiar."

"The old life was not a happy one," said Graham. "I do not regret that."

She looked at him quickly. There was a brief pause. She sighed

encouragingly. "No?"

"No," said Graham. "It was a little life--and unmeaning. But this--.

We thought the world complex and crowded and civilised enough. Yet I

see--although in this world I am barely four days old--looking back on

my own time, that it was a queer, barbaric time--the mere beginning of

this new order. The mere beginning of this new order. You will find it

hard to understand how little I know."

"You may ask me what you like," she said, smiling at him.

"Then tell me who these people are. I'm still very much in the dark

about them. It's puzzling. Are there any Generals?"

"Men in hats and feathers?"

"Of course not. No. I suppose they are the men who control the great

public businesses. Who is that distinguished looking man?"

"That? He's a most important officer. That is Morden. He is managing

director of the Antibilious Pill Company. I have heard that his workers

sometimes turn out a myriad myriad pills a day in the twenty-four hours.

Fancy a myriad myriad!"

"A myriad myriad. No wonder he looks proud," said Graham. "Pills! What a

wonderful time it is! That man in purple?"

"He is not quite one of the inner circle, you know. But we like him. He

is really clever and very amusing. He is one of the heads of the

Medical Faculty of our London University. All medical men, you know, are

shareholders in the Medical Faculty Company, and wear that purple. You

have to be--to be qualified. But of course, people who are paid by fees

for doing something--" She smiled away the social pretensions of all

such people.

"Are any of your great artists or authors here?"

"No authors. They are mostly such queer people--and so preoccupied about

themselves. And they quarrel so dreadfully! They will fight, some of

them, for precedence on staircases! Dreadful isn't it? But I think

Wraysbury, the fashionable capillotomist, is here. From Capri."

"Capillotomist," said Graham. "Ah! I remember. An artist! Why not?"

"We have to cultivate him," she said apologetically. "Our heads are in

his hands." She smiled.

Graham hesitated at the invited compliment, but his glance was

expressive. "Have the arts grown with the rest of civilised things?" he

said. "Who are your great painters?"

She looked at him doubtfully. Then laughed. "For a moment," she said, "I

thought you meant--" She laughed again. "You mean, of course, those good

men you used to think so much of because they could cover great spaces

of canvas with oil-colours? Great oblongs. And people used to put the

things in gilt frames and hang them up in rows in their square rooms. We

haven't any. People grew tired of that sort of thing."

"But what did you think I meant?"

She put a finger significantly on a cheek whose glow was above

suspicion, and smiled and looked very arch and pretty and inviting. "And

here," and she indicated her eyelid.

Graham had an adventurous moment. Then a grotesque memory of a picture

he had somewhere seen of Uncle Toby and the Widow flashed across his

mind. An archaic shame came upon him. He became acutely aware that he

was visible to a great number of interested people. "I see," he remarked

inadequately. He turned awkwardly away from her, fascinating facility.

He looked about him to meet a number of eyes that immediately occupied

themselves with other things. Possibly he coloured a little. "Who is

that talking with the lady in saffron?" he asked, avoiding her eyes.

The person in question he learnt was one of the great organisers of the

American theatres just fresh from a gigantic production at Mexico. His

face reminded Graham of a bust of Caligula. Another striking looking

man was the Black Labour Master. The phrase at the time made no deep

impression, but afterwards it recurred;--the Black Labour Master? The

little lady, in no degree embarrassed, pointed out to him a charming

little woman as one of the subsidiary wives of the Anglican Bishop of

London. She added encomiums on the episcopal courage--hitherto there had

been a rule of clerical monogamy--"neither a natural nor an expedient

condition of things. Why should the natural development of the

affections be dwarfed and restricted because a man is a priest?"

"And, bye the bye," she added, "are you an Anglican?" Graham was on the

verge of hesitating inquiries about the status of a "subsidiary wife,"

apparently an euphemistic phrase, when Lincoln's return broke off this

very suggestive and interesting conversation. They crossed the aisle to

where a tall man in crimson, and two charming persons in Burmese costume

(as it seemed to him) awaited him diffidently. From their civilities he

passed to other presentations.

In a little while his multitudinous impressions began to organise

themselves into a general effect. At first the glitter of the gathering

had raised all the democrat in Graham; he had felt hostile and

satirical. But it is not in human nature to resist an atmosphere of

courteous regard. Soon the music, the light, the play of colours, the

shining arms and shoulders about him, the touch of hands, the transient

interest of smiling faces, the frothing sound of skillfully modulated

voices, the atmosphere of compliment, interest and respect, had woven

together into a fabric of indisputable pleasure. Graham for a time

forgot his spacious resolutions. He gave way insensibly to the

intoxication of me position that was conceded him, his manner became

less conscious, more convincingly regal, his feet walked assuredly, the

black robe fell with a bolder fold and pride ennobled his voice. After

all this was a brilliant interesting world.

His glance went approvingly over the shifting colours of the people,

it rested here and there in kindly criticism upon a face. Presently it

occurred to him that he owed some apology to the charming little person

with the red hair and blue eyes. He felt guilty of a clumsy snub. It

was not princely to ignore her advances, even if his policy necessitated

their rejection. He wondered if he should see her again. And suddenly

a little thing touched all the glamour of this brilliant gathering and

changed its quality.

He looked up and saw passing across a bridge of porcelain and looking

down upon him, a face that was almost immediately hidden, the face of

the girl he had seen overnight in the little room beyond the theatre

after his escape from the Council. And she was looking with much the