7. The Bringing in of Lord Barralonga's Party

by H.G. Wells

　　Section 1

　　The conference broke up upon this announcement, but Lord Barralongaand his party were not brought to the Conference Gardens until longafter dark. No effort was made to restrain or control the movementsof the Earthlings. Mr. Burleigh walked down to the lake with LadyStella and the psychologist whose name was Lion, asking andanswering questions. Mr. Burleigh's chauffeur wandered ratherdisconsolately, keeping within hail of his employer. Mr. RupertCatskill took Mr. Mush off by the arm as if to give himinstructions.

　　Mr. Barnstaple wanted to walk about alone to recall and digest theastounding realizations of the afternoon and to accustom himselfto the wonder of this beautiful world, so beautiful and now in thetwilight so mysterious also, with its trees and flowers becomingdim and shapeless notes of pallor and blackness and with the clearforms and gracious proportions of its buildings melting into atwilight indistinctness.

　　The earthliness of his companions intervened between him and thisworld into which he felt he might otherwise have been acceptedand absorbed. He was in it, but in it only as a strange anddiscordant intruder. Yet he loved it already and desired it and waspassionately anxious to become a part of it. He had a vague but verypowerful feeling that if only he could get away from his companions,if only in some way he could cast off his earthly clothingand everything upon him that marked him as earthly and linked himto earth, he would by the very act of casting that off becomehimself native to Utopia, and then that this tormenting sense, thisbleak distressing strangeness would vanish out of his mind. Hewould suddenly find himself a Utopian in nature and reality, andit was earth that would become the incredible dream, a dream thatwould fade at last completely out of his mind.

　　For a time, however, Father Amerton's need of a hearer preventedany such detachment from earthly thoughts and things. He stuck closeto Mr. Barnstaple and maintained a stream of questions and commentsthat threw over this Utopian scene the quality of some Earl's Courtexhibition that the two of them were visiting and criticizingtogether. It was evidently so provisional, so disputable and unrealto him, that at any moment Mr. Barnstaple felt he would express noastonishment if a rift in the scenery suddenly let in the clatterof the Earl's Court railway station or gave a glimpse of theconventional Gothic spire of St. Barnabas in the West.

　　At first Father Amerton's mind was busy chiefly with the fact thaton the morrow he was to be "dealt with" on account of the scene inthe conference. "How _can_ they deal with me?" he said for thefourth time.

　　"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Barnstaple. Every time Mr. Amertonbegan speaking Mr. Barnstaple said, "I beg your pardon," in order toconvey to him that he was interrupting a train of thought. But everytime Mr. Barnstaple said, "I beg your pardon," Mr. Amerton wouldmerely remark, "You ought to consult someone about your hearing,"and then go on with what he had to say.

　　"How can I be _dealt_ with?" he asked of Mr. Barnstaple and thecircumambient dusk. "How can I be dealt with?"

　　"Oh! psycho-analysis or something of that sort," said Mr. Barnstaple.

　　"It takes two to play at that game," said Father Amerton, but itseemed to Mr. Barnstaple with a slight flavour of relief in histone. "Whatever they ask me, whatever they suggest to me, I will notfail--I will bear my witness."

　　"I have no doubt they will find it hard to suppress you," saidMr. Barnstaple bitterly....

　　For a time they walked among the tall sweet-smelling, white-floweredshrubs in silence. Now and then Mr. Barnstaple would quicken orslacken his pace with the idea of increasing his distance fromFather Amerton but quite mechanically Father Amerton responded tothese efforts. "Promiscuity," he began again presently. "What otherword could you use?"

　　"I really beg your pardon," said Mr. Barnstaple.

　　"What other word could I have used _but_ 'promiscuity'? What elsecould one expect--with people running about in this amazing want ofcostume, but the morals of the monkeys' cage? They admit that ourinstitution of marriage is practically unknown to them!"

　　"It's a different world," said Mr. Barnstaple irritably. "Adifferent world."

　　"The Laws of Morality hold good for every conceivable world."

　　"But in a world in which people propagated by fission and there wasno sex?"

　　"Morality would be simpler but it would be the same morality."...

　　Presently Mr. Barnstaple was begging his pardon again.

　　"I was saying that this is a lost world."

　　"It doesn't _look_ lost," said Mr. Barnstaple.

　　"It has rejected and forgotten Salvation."

　　Mr. Barnstaple put his hands in his pockets and began to whistlethe barcarolle from "The Tales of Hoffman," very softly to himself.Would Father Amerton never leave him? Could nothing be done withFather Amerton? At the old shows at Earl's Court there used to bewire baskets for waste paper and cigarette ends and bores generally.If one could only tip Father Amerton suddenly into some suchreceptacle!

　　"Salvation has been offered them, and they have rejected it andwell nigh forgotten it. And that is why we have been sent to them. Wehave been sent to them to recall them to the One Thing that Matters,to the One Forgotten Thing. Once more we have to raise the healingsymbol as Moses raised it in the Wilderness. Ours is no lightmission. We have been sent into this Hell of sensuous materialism--"

　　"Oh, _Lord_!" said Mr. Barnstaple, and relapsed into the barcarolle....

　　"I _beg_ your pardon," he exclaimed again presently.

　　"Where is the Pole Star? What has happened to the Wain?"

　　Mr. Barnstaple looked up.

　　He had not thought of the stars before, and he looked up prepared inthis fresh Universe to see the strangest constellations. But just asthe life and size of the planet they were on ran closely parallelto the earth's, so he beheld above him a starry vault of familiarforms. And just as the Utopian world failed to be altogetherparallel to its sister universe, so did these constellations seem tobe a little out in their drawing. Orion, he thought, straddled widerand with a great unfamiliar nebula at one corner, and it was true--theWain was flattened out and the pointers pointed to a great void inthe heavens.

　　"Their Pole Star gone! The Pointers, the Wain askew! It issymbolical," said Father Amerton.

　　It was only too obviously going to be symbolical. Mr. Barnstaplerealized that a fresh storm of eloquence was imminent from FatherAmerton. At any cost he felt this nuisance must be abated.

　　Section 2

　　On earth Mr. Barnstaple had been a passive victim to bores of allsorts, delicately and painfully considerate of the mentallimitations that made their insensitive pressure possible. But thefree air of Utopia had already mounted to his head and releasedinitiatives that his excessively deferential recognition of othershad hitherto restrained. He had had enough of Father Amerton; it wasnecessary to turn off Father Amerton, and he now proceeded to doso with a simple directness that surprised himself.

　　"Father Amerton," he said, "I have a confession to make to you."

　　"Ah!" cried Father Amerton. "Please--anything?"

　　"You have been walking about with me and shouting at my ears until Iam strongly impelled to murder you."

　　"If what I have said has struck home--"

　　"It hasn't struck home. It has been a tiresome, silly, deafeningjabbering in my ears. It wearies me indescribably. It prevents myattending to the marvellous things about us. I see exactly what youmean when you say that there is no Pole Star here and that that issymbolical. Before you begin I appreciate the symbol, and a veryobvious, weak and ultimately inaccurate symbol it is. But you areone of those obstinate spirits who believes in spite of all evidencethat the eternal hills are still eternal and the fixed stars fixedfor ever. I want you to understand that I am entirely out ofsympathy with all this stuff of yours. You seem to embody all thatis wrong and ugly and impossible in Catholic teaching. I agree withthese Utopians that there is something wrong with your mind aboutsex, in all probability a nasty twist given to it in early life,and that what you keep saying and hinting about sexual life hereis horrible and outrageous. And I am equally hostile to you andexasperated and repelled by you when you speak of religion proper.You make religion disgusting just as you make sex disgusting. Youare a dirty priest. What _you_ call Christianity is a black and uglysuperstition, a mere excuse for malignity and persecution. It is anoutrage upon Christ. If you are a Christian, then most passionatelyI declare myself _not_ a Christian. But there are other meaningsfor Christianity than those you put upon it, and in another sensethis Utopia here is Christian beyond all dreaming. Utterly beyondyour understanding. We have come into this glorious world, which,compared to our world, is like a bowl of crystal compared to an oldtin can, and you have the insufferable impudence to say that we havebeen sent hither as missionaries to teach them--God knows what!"

　　"God _does_ know what," said Father Amerton a little taken aback,but coming up very pluckily.

　　"Oh!" cried Mr. Barnstaple, and was for a moment speechless.

　　"Listen to me, my friend," said Father Amerton, catching at hissleeve.

　　"Not for my life!" cried Mr. Barnstaple, recoiling. "See! Down thatvista, away there on the shore of the lake, those black figures areMr. Burleigh, Mr. Mush and Lady Stella. They brought you here. Theybelong to your party and you belong to them. If they had not wantedyour company you would not have been in their car. Go to them. Iwill not have you with me any longer. I refuse you and reject you.That is your way. This, by this little building, is mine. Don'tfollow me, or I will lay hands on you and bring in these Utopiansto interfere between us.... Forgive my plainness, Mr. Amerton.But get away from me! Get away from me!"

　　Mr. Barnstaple turned, and seeing that Father Amerton stoodhesitating at the parting of the ways, took to his heels and ranfrom him.

　　He fled along an alley behind tall hedges, turned sharply to theright and then to the left, passed over a high bridge that crossedin front of a cascade that flung a dash of spray in his face,blundered by two couples of lovers who whispered softly in thedarkling, ran deviously across flower-studded turf, and at lastthrew himself down breathless upon the steps that led up to aterrace that looked towards lake and mountains, and was adorned,it seemed in the dim light, with squat stone figures of seatedvigilant animals and men.

　　"Ye merciful stars!" cried Mr. Barnstaple. "At last I am alone."

　　He sat on these steps for a long time with his eyes upon the sceneabout him, drinking in the satisfying realization that for a briefinterval at any rate, with no earthly presence to intervene, heand Utopia were face to face.

　　Section 3

　　He could not call this world the world of his dreams because he hadnever dared to dream of any world so closely shaped to the desiresand imaginations of his heart. But surely this world it was, or aworld the very fellow of it, that had lain deep beneath the thoughtsand dreams of thousands of sane and troubled men and women in theworld of disorder from which he had come. It was no world of emptypeace, no such golden decadence of indulgence as Mr. Catskill triedto imagine it; it was a world, Mr. Barnstaple perceived, intenselymilitant, conquering and to conquer, prevailing over the obduracy offorce and matter, over the lifeless separations of empty space andall the antagonistic mysteries of being.

　　In Utopia in the past, obscured by the superficial exploits ofstatesmen like Burleigh and Catskill and the competition of tradersand exploiters every whit as vile and vulgar as their earthlycompeers, the work of quiet and patient thinkers and teachers hadgone on and the foundations which sustained this serene intensityof activity had been laid. How few of these pioneers had ever feltmore than a transitory gleam of the righteous loveliness of theworld their lives made possible!

　　And yet even in the hate and turmoil and distresses of the Days ofConfusion there must have been earnest enough of the exquisite andglorious possibilities of life. Over the foulest slums the sunsetcalled to the imaginations of men, and from mountain ridges, acrossgreat valleys, from cliffs and hillsides and by the uncertain andterrible splendours of the sea, men must have had glimpses of theconceivable and attainable magnificence of being. Every flowerpetal, every sunlit leaf, the vitality of young things, the happymoments of the human mind transcending itself in art, all thesethings must have been material for hope, incentive to effort. Andnow at last--this world!

　　Mr. Barnstaple lifted up his hands like one who worships to thefriendly multitude of the stars above him.

　　"I have seen," he whispered. "I have seen."

　　Little lights and soft glows of illumination were coming out hereand there over this great park of flowerlike buildings and gardenspaces that sloped down towards the lake. A circling aeroplane,itself a star, hummed softly overhead.

　　A slender girl came past him down the steps and paused at the sightof him.

　　"Are you one of the Earthlings?" came the question, and a beam ofsoft light shone momentarily upon Mr. Barnstaple from the braceleton her arm.

　　"I came to-day," said Mr. Barnstaple, peering up at her.

　　"You are the man who came alone in a little machine of tin, withrubber air-bags round the wheels, very rusty underneath, andpainted yellow. I have been looking at it."

　　"It is not a bad little car," said Mr. Barnstaple.

　　"At first we thought the priest came in it with you."

　　"He is no friend of mine."

　　"There were priests like that in Utopia many years ago. They causedmuch mischief among the people."

　　"He was with the other lot," said Mr. Barnstaple. "For theirweek-end party I should think him--rather a mistake."

　　She sat down a step or so above him.

　　"It is wonderful that you should come here out of your world to us.Do you find this world of our very wonderful? I suppose many thingsthat seen quite commonplace to me because I have been born amongthem seem wonderful to you."

　　"You are not very old?"

　　"I am eleven. I am learning the history of the Ages Of Confusion,and they say your world is still in an Age of Confusion. It is justas though you came to us out of the past--out of history. I was inthe Conference and I was watching your face. You love this presentworld of ours--at least you love it much more than your other peopledo."

　　"I want to live all the rest of my life in it."

　　"I wonder if that is possible?"

　　"Why should it not be possible? It will be easier than sending meback. I should not be very much in the way. I should only be herefor twenty or thirty years at the most, and I would learn everythingI could and do everything I was told."

　　"But isn't there work that you have to do in your own world?"

　　Mr. Barnstaple made no answer to that. He did not seem to hear it.It was the girl who presently broke the silence.

　　"They say that when we Utopians are young, before our minds andcharacters are fully formed and matured, we are very like the menand women of the Age of Confusion. We are more egotistical then,they tell us; life about us is still so unknown, that we areadventurous and romantic. I suppose I am egotistical yet--andadventurous. And it does still seem to me that in spite of manyterrible and dreadful things there was much that must have beenwildly exciting and desirable in that past--which is still so likeyour present. What can it have been like to have been a generalentering a conquered city? Or a prince being crowned? Or to be richand able to astonish people by acts of power and benevolence? Or tobe a martyr led out to die for some splendid misunderstood cause?"

　　"These things sound better in stories and histories than in reality,"said Mr. Barnstaple after due consideration. "Did you hear Mr.Rupert Catskill, the last of the Earthlings to make a speech?"

　　"He thought romantically--but he did not look romantic."

　　"He has lived most romantically. He has fought bravely in wars. Hehas been a prisoner and escaped wonderfully from prison. His violentimaginations have caused the deaths of thousands of people. Andpresently we shall see another romantic adventurer in this LordBarralonga they are bringing hither. He is enormously rich and hetries to astonish people with his wealth--just as you have dreamtof astonishing people."

　　"Are they not astonished?"

　　"Romance is not reality," said Mr. Barnstaple. "He is one of anumber of floundering, corrupting rich men who are a weariness tothemselves and an intolerable nuisance to the rest of our world.They want to do vulgar showy things. This man Barralonga was anassistant to a photographer and something of an actor when acertain invention called moving pictures came into our world. Hebecame a great prospector in the business of showing these pictures,partly by accident, partly by the unscrupulous cheating of variousinventors. Then he launched out into speculations in shipping and ina trade we carry on in our world in frozen meat brought from greatdistances. He made food costly for many people and impossible forsome, and so he grew rich. For in our world men grow wealthy byintercepting rather than by serving. And having become ignobly rich,certain of our politicians, for whom he did some timely services,ennobled him by giving him the title of Lord. Do you understand thethings I am saying? Was your Age of Confusion so like ours? You didnot know it was so ugly. Forgive me if I disillusion you about theAge of Confusion and its romantic possibilities. But I have juststepped out of the dust and disorder and noise of its indiscipline,out of limitation, cruelties and distresses, out of a wearinessin which hope dies.... Perhaps if my world attracts you you mayyet have an opportunity of adventuring out of all this into itsdisorders.... That will be an adventure indeed.... Who knows whatmay happen between our worlds?... But you will not like it, I amafraid. You cannot imagine how dirty our world is.... Dirt anddisease, these are in the trailing skirts of all romance...."

　　A silence fell between them; he followed his own thoughts and thegirl sat and wondered over him.

　　At length he spoke again.

　　"Shall I tell you what I was thinking of when you spoke to me?"

　　"Yes?"

　　"Your world is the consummation of a million ancient dreams. It iswonderful! It is wonder, high as heaven. But it is a great grief tome that two dear friends of mine cannot be here with me to see whatI am seeing. It is queer how strong the thought of them is in mymind. One has passed now beyond all the universes, alas!--but theother is still in my world. You are a student, my dear; everyone ofyour world, I suppose, is a student here, but in our world studentsare a class apart. We three were happy together because we werestudents and not yet caught into the mills of senseless toil, andwe were none the less happy perhaps because we were miserably poorand often hungry together. We used to talk and dispute together andin our students' debating society, discussing the disorders of ourworld and how some day they might be bettered. Was there, in yourAge of Confusion, that sort of eager, hopeful, poverty-struckstudent life?"

　　"Go on," said the girl with her eyes intent on his dim profile. "Inold novels I have read of just that hungry dreaming student world."

　　"We three agreed that the supreme need of our time was education. Weagreed that was the highest service we could join. We all set aboutit in our various ways, I the least useful of the three. My friendsand I drifted a little apart. They edited a great monthly periodicalthat helped to keep the world of science together, and my friend,serving a careful and grudging firm of publishers, edited schoolbooks for them, conducted an educational paper, and also inspectedschools for our university. He was too heedless of pay and profitever to become even passably well off though these publishersprofited greatly by his work; his whole life was a continual serviceof toil for teaching; he did not take as much as a month's holidayin any year in his life. While he lived I thought little of the workhe was doing, but since he died I have heard from teachers whoseschools he inspected, and from book writers whom he advised, of theincessant high quality of his toil and the patience and sympathy ofhis work. On such lives as his this Utopia in which your sweet lifeis opening is founded; on such lives our world of earth will yetbuild its Utopia. But the life of this friend of mine ended abruptlyin a way that tore my heart. He worked too hard and too long througha crisis in which it was inconvenient for him to take a holiday. Hisnervous system broke down with shocking suddenness, his mind gaveway, he passed into a phase of acute melancholia and--died. For itis perfectly true, old Nature has neither righteousness nor pity.This happened a few weeks ago. That other old friend and I, withhis wife, who had been his tireless helper, were chief among themourners at his funeral. To-night the memory of that comes back tome with extraordinary vividness. I do not know how you dispose ofyour dead here, but on earth the dead are mostly buried in theearth."

　　"We are burnt," said the girl.

　　"Those who are liberal-minded in our world burn also. Our friend wasburnt, and we stood and took our part in a service according to therites of our ancient religion in which we no longer believed, andpresently we saw his coffin, covered with wreaths of flowers, slidefrom before us out of our sight through the gates that led to thefurnaces of the crematorium, and as it went, taking with it so muchof my youth, I saw that my other dear old friend was sobbing, andI too was wrung to the pitch of tears to think that so valiantand devoted and industrious a life should end, as it seemed, somiserably and thanklessly. The priest had been reading a longcontentious discourse by a theological writer named Paul, full ofbad arguments by analogy and weak assertions. I wished that insteadof the ideas of this ingenious ancient we could have had somediscourse upon the real nobility of our friend, on the pride andintensity of his work and on his scorn for mercenary things. All hislife he had worked with unlimited devotion for such a world as this,and yet I doubt if he had ever had any realization of the clearer,nobler life for man that his life of toil and the toil of such livesas his, were making sure and certain in the days to come. He lived byfaith. He lived too much by faith. There was not enough sunlight inhis life. If I could have him here now--and that other dear friendwho grieved for him so bitterly; if I could have them both here;if I could give up my place here to them so that they could see, asI see, the real greatness of their lives reflected in these greatconsequences of such lives as theirs--then, then I could rejoice inUtopia indeed.... But I feel now as if I had taken my old friend'ssavings and was spending them on myself...."

　　Mr. Barnstaple suddenly remembered the youth of his hearer. "Forgiveme, my dear child, for running on in this fashion. But your voicewas kind."

　　The girl's answer was to bend down and brush his extended hand withher soft lips.

　　Then suddenly she sprang to her feet. "Look at that light," shesaid, "among the stars!"

　　Mr. Barnstaple stood up beside her.

　　"That is the aeroplane bringing Lord Barralonga and his party; LordBarralonga who killed a man to-day! Is he a very big, strongman--ungovernable and wonderful?"

　　Mr. Barnstaple, struck by a sudden doubt, looked sharply at thesweet upturned face beside him.

　　"I have never seen him. But I believe he is a youngish, baldish,undersized man, who suffers very gravely from a disordered liver andkidneys. This has prevented the dissipation of his energies uponyouthful sports and pleasures and enabled him to concentrate uponthe acquisition of property. And so he was able to buy the nobletitle that touches your imagination. Come with me and look at him."

　　The girl stood still and met his eyes. She was eleven years oldand she was as tall as he was.

　　"But was there no romance in the past?"

　　"Only in the hearts of the young. And it died."

　　"But is there no romance?"

　　"Endless romance--and it has all to come. It comes for you."

　　Section 4

　　The bringing in of Lord Barralonga and his party was something ofan anti-climax to Mr. Barnstaple's wonderful day. He was tired and,quite unreasonably, he resented the invasion of Utopia by thesepeople.

　　The two parties of Earthlings were brought together in a brightlylit hall near the lawn upon which the Barralonga aeroplane hadcome down. The newcomers came in in a group together, blinking,travel-worn and weary-looking. But it was evident they were greatlyrelieved to encounter other Earthlings in what was to them a stillintensely puzzling experience. For they had had nothing to comparewith the calm and lucid discussion of the Conference Place. Theirlapse into this strange world was still an incomprehensible riddlefor them.

　　Lord Barralonga was the owner of the gnome-like face that had lookedout at Mr. Barnstaple when the large grey car had passed him on theMaidenhead Road. His skull was very low and broad above his browsso that he reminded Mr. Barnstaple of the flat stopper of a glassbottle. He looked hot and tired, he was considerably dishevelled asif from a struggle, and one arm was in a sling; his little browneyes were as alert and wary as those of a wicked urchin in the handsof a policeman. Sticking close to him like a familiar spirit was asmall, almost jockey-like chauffeur, whom he addressed as "Ridley."Ridley's face also was marked by the stern determination of a manin a difficult position not in any manner to give himself away. Hisleft cheek and ear had been cut in the automobile smash and wereliberally adorned with sticking-plaster. Miss Greeta Grey, thelady of the party, was a frankly blonde beauty in a white flanneltailor-made suit. She was extraordinarily unruffled by thecircumstances in which she found herself; it was as if she had nosense whatever of their strangeness. She carried herself with thehabitual hauteur of a beautiful girl almost professionally exposedto the risk of unworthy advances. Anywhere.

　　The other two people of the party were a grey-faced, grey-cladAmerican, also very wary-eyed, who was, Mr. Barnstaple learnt fromMr. Mush, Hunker, the Cinema King, and a thoroughly ruffled-lookingFrenchman, a dark, smartly dressed man, with an imperfect commandof English, who seemed rather to have fallen into Lord Barralonga'sparty than to have belonged to it properly. Mr. Barnstaple's mindleapt to the conclusion, and nothing occurred afterwards to changehis opinion, that some interest in the cinematograph had broughtthis gentleman within range of Lord Barralonga's hospitality andthat he had been caught, as a foreigner may so easily be caught,into the embrace of a thoroughly uncongenial week-end expedition.

　　As Lord Barralonga and Mr. Hunker came forward to greet Mr. Burleighand Mr. Catskill, this Frenchman addressed himself to Mr. Barnstaplewith the inquiry whether he spoke French.

　　"I cannot understand," he said. "We were to have gone toViltshire--Wiltshire, and then one 'orrible thing has happen afteranother. What is it we have come to and what sort of people are allthese people who speak most excellent French? Is it a joke of LordBarralonga, or a dream, or what has happen to us?"

　　Mr. Barnstaple attempted some explanation.

　　"Another dimension," said the Frenchman, "an other worl'. That isall very well. But I have my business to attend to in London. I haveno need to be brought back in this way to France, some sort of France,some other France in some other worl'. It is too much of a jokealtogether."

　　Mr. Barnstaple attempted some further exposition. It was clear fromhis interlocutor's puzzled face that the phrases he used were toodifficult. He turned helplessly to Lady Stella and found her readyto undertake the task. "This lady," he said, "will be able to makethings plain to you. Lady Stella, this is Monsieur--"

　　"Emile Dupont," the Frenchman bowed. "I am what you call ajournalist and publicist. I am interested in the cinematograph fromthe point of view of education and propaganda. It is why I am herewith his Lordship Barralonga."

　　French conversation was Lady Stella's chief accomplishment. Shesailed into it now very readily. She took over the elucidation ofM. Dupont, and only interrupted it to tell Miss Greeta Grey howpleasant it was to have another woman with her in this strangeworld.

　　Relieved of M. Dupont, Mr. Barnstaple stood back and surveyed thelittle group of Earthlings in the centre of the hall and the circleof tall, watchful Utopians about them and rather aloof from them.Mr. Burleigh was being distantly cordial to Lord Barralonga, andMr. Hunker was saying what a great pleasure it was to him to meet"Britain's foremost statesman." Mr. Catskill stood in the mostfriendly manner beside Barralonga; they knew each other well; andFather Amerton exchanged comments with Mr. Mush. Ridley and Penk,after some moments of austere regard, had gone apart to discuss thetechnicalities of the day's experience in undertones. Nobody paidany attention to Mr. Barnstaple.

　　It was like a meeting at a railway station. It was like a reception.It was utterly incredible and altogether commonplace. He was weary.He was saturated and exhausted by wonder.

　　"Oh, I am going to my bed!" he yawned suddenly. "I am going to mylittle bed."

　　He made his way through the friendly-eyed Utopians out into the calmstarlight. He nodded to the strange nebula at the corner of Orion asa weary parent might nod to importunate offspring. He would considerit again in the morning. He staggered drowsily through the gardensto his own particular retreat.

　　He disrobed and went to sleep as immediately and profoundly as atired child.