e wisps and then a veil of filmy cloud hid the
prospect from his eyes. He wasn't at all giddy nor very much frightened,
only in a state of enormous consternation.

CHAPTER III. THE BALLOON

I

Bert Smallways was a vulgar little creature, the sort of pert, limited
soul that the old civilisation of the early twentieth century produced
by the million in every country of the world. He had lived all his life
in narrow streets, and between mean houses he could not look over, and
in a narrow circle of ideas from which there was no escape. He thought
the whole duty of man was to be smarter than his fellows, get his hands,
as he put it, "on the dibs," and have a good time. He was, in fact, the
sort of man who had made England and America what they were. The luck
had been against him so far, but that was by the way. He was a mere
aggressive and acquisitive individual with no sense of the State,
no habitual loyalty, no devotion, no code of honour, no code even of
courage. Now by a curious accident he found himself lifted out of his
marvellous modern world for a time, out of all the rush and confused
appeals of it, and floating like a thing dead and disembodied between
sea and sky. It was as if Heaven was experimenting with him, had picked
him out as a sample from the English millions, to look at him more
nearly, and to see what was happening to the soul of man. But what
Heaven made of him in that case I cannot profess to imagine, for I have
long since abandoned all theories about the ideals and satisfactions of
Heaven.

To be alone in a balloon at a height of fourteen or fifteen thousand
feet--and to that height Bert Smallways presently rose is like nothing
else in human experience. It is one of the supreme things possible to
man. No flying machine can ever better it. It is to pass extraordinarily
out of human things. It is to be still and alone to an unprecedented
degree. It is solitude without the suggestion of intervention; it is
calm without a single irrelevant murmur. It is to see the sky. No sound
reaches one of all the roar and jar of humanity, the air is clear and
sweet beyond the thought of defilement. No bird, no insect comes so
high. No wind blows ever in a balloon, no breeze rustles, for it moves
with the wind and is itself a part of the atmosphere. Once started, it
does not rock nor sway; you cannot feel whether it rises or falls. Bert
felt acutely cold, but he wasn't mountain-sick; he put on the coat and
ove