When the Sleeper Wakes

th an oblong aperture in the centre, opening into a funnel in which a wheel of broad fans seemed to be rotating, apparently driving the air up the shaft. The faint humming note of it

o windows. And he began to recall that along all the vast chambers and passages he had traversed with Howard he had observed no windows at all. Had there been w

, the simply constructed bed, the ingenious arrangements by which the labour of bedroom service was practically abolished. And over everything was a curious absence of deliberate ornament, a bare grace of form and colour, that he found very pleasing to the eye. There were sev

the decorative scheme of the room, and in the centre of this side projected a little apparatus about a yard square and having a white smooth face to the

sight it seemed like Russian. Then he noticed a sugge

n huwd

vidly, one of the best stories in the world. But this thing before him was not a book as he understood it. He puzzled out the titles of two adjacent cylinders.

one of the double cylinders within, and on the upper edge a little stud like the stud of an electric bell. He pressed this and a rapid clicking began and ceased.

as exactly like reality viewed through an inverted opera glass and heard through a long tube. His interest was seized at once by the situation, which presented a man pacing up and down and v

f named, heard "when the Sleeper wakes," used jestingly as a proverb for remote postponement, and passed him

to an end, and the square face

ents that conveyed strange suggestions of altered moral ideals, flashes of dubious enlightenment. The blue canvas that bulked so largely in his first impression of the city ways appeared again and again

-day substitute for a novel, that he awoke to the little green and wh

e ambiguous Council, the swift phases of his waking hour, came back. These people had spoken of the Council with suggestions of a vague universality of power

s of the revolving fan. As the fan swept round, a dim turmoil like

, he perceived the little intermittent strip of sky was

eling of wonder was in abeyance; but he was curious, anxious for information. He wanted to know exactly how he stood to these new things. He tried

understandable after two hundred years. The haphazard cylinders he substituted displayed a musical fantasia. At first it was beautiful, and then it was sensuous. He presently recognized what appeared to him to be an altered version of the story of Tannh

a flavour of strangely twisted sentimentality. Suddenl

ry art, and gave way to an archaic indignation. He rose, angry and half ashamed at himself for witnessing this thing even in solitude. He pulled forward the apparatus, and with some violence sought for a means of stop

the things he had seen, conflicted, confused him. It seemed to him the most amazing thing of all that in his thirty years of life he had never tried to shap

The vastness of street and house he was prepared for, the multitudes of people. But

the one hand and abject poverty on the other, still prevailed. He knew enough of the essential factors of life to understand that correlation. And not only were the buildings of the city gigantic and the crowds in the street gigantic, but the voices he h

red, felt that feverish exhaustion that does not admit of rest. He listened for long spaces unde

they haven't reversed the tendency of our time and gone back to the rule of the oldest. My claims are indisputable. Mumble, mumble. I remember the Bulgarian atrocities as though it was yesterday. 'T

s new world," he said. "I don't unde

all sorts of things Let me try

n. Then he revived the more salient features of his life, memories of the wife long since dead, her magic influence now gone beyond corruption, of his rivals and friends and betrayers, of the swift decision of this issue and that, and then of his, last years of misery, of fluctuating resolves, and at last of his

r pink with dawn. An old persuasion came out of the dark recesses of his memory. "I must sleep," he said. It appeared as a delightful relief fro

d awakened to mankind it seemed only to be snatched away into this unaccountable solitude. Howard came regularly with subtly sustaining and nutritive fluids, and light and pleasant foods, quite strange to Graham. He always closed the door carefully as he entered. On matters of detail he

d together in his mind. Almost every possible interpretation of his position he debated-even as it chanced, the right interpretation. Things that presen

d to admit with him a breath of momentous happening. His enquiries became more definite and searching. Howard retreated through prote

the history of a gross and a ha

afraid of something I shall do. In some w

of your property puts great possibilities of interference in your hands. And i

entury," corr

anyhow, ignorant as you are

I a

ainly

he sort of man who

. The Council had surrounded you with antiseptic conditions. As a matter of fact, we thought that you were d

t and day with facts and warnings and all the wisdom of the time to fit me for my res

pulled

concealment of which you are the salient point. Is this Council, or commit

f suspicion-

be ill. I am alive. Make no doubt of it, I am alive. Every day my pulse is stronger and my mind

iv

He came towards Graham and spo

c man! You find it dull here. But we are anxious that everything you may desire-every

sed me

aham thoughtfu

ave treated yo

n yonder stre

Howard, "I am

were to accept the proposal, demand some sort of company? Would there be any possibilities of gathering from the conversation of this additional person some vag

ou mean by

s shoulders. "Human beings," he said,

a man wishes to relieve such a tedium as this-by feminine society, for instance. We think it no scandal. We ha

stopp

thing I should perhaps have thought of before,

ed the ext

man that his imagination suddenly created dominated his mi

he s

ng rapidly up a

s you call it. Yes, I know. Desire and indulgence are life in a sense-and Death! Extinction! In my life before I slept I had worked

his clenched fists. He gave way to an anger fit, he swore arc

dark. But I know this, that I am secluded here for no good purpose. For no good

a danger to himself. He stopped. Howard sto

a message to the Co

ve shown upon his face; at any rate Howard's movement was quick. In a second the

ain, stamping about the room and shouting curses. For a long time he kept himself in a sort of frenzy, raging at his position, at his own folly, at the

permitted it. It must, of course, be legal. These people were two hundred years further on in the march of civilisation than the Victorian gen

ttempts of his reason to dispose of these suggestions, though for the most par

t last, "I can give up what they want. But what do they want

inexplicable hesitations. Then, for a time, his mind circled about the idea of escaping from these rooms; but whither could he escape into this vast, crow

t anyone if harm s

untably the axis. A text, irrelevant enough and yet curiously insistent, cam

us that one man shoul