w's the best of its kind."

Christopher found this was true. Everything in the house was modern.
There was no reproduction, no imitation. It was all solidly and
emphatically modern: glass, china, furniture, books, pictures, the
silk hangings, the white statuary in the orangery: all modern. There
was nothing poor or mean or artistically bad, but the whole gave an
impression of life yet to be lived, an incompleteness that was
baffling in its obscurity.

Peter Masters talked much of events, of material things, of himself,
but never of mankind in general. He spoke of no friends, or
neighbours: he appeared to be served by machines, to stand alone in
life, unconscious of his isolation. They played billiards in the
evening and the host had an easy victory, and gave Christopher a
practical lesson in the one game he had found time to master.

"I've work to do. Breakfast to-morrow at 8 sharp. You are going to
Birmingham with me."

No question about it or pretence of asking his visitor's wishes.
Christopher did not resent that, but he resented his growing inability
to resist. He flung open the windows of his room and looked out.
Eastward there was a glow in the sky over the great sleepless city:
northward a still nearer glow from a foundry, he thought, but westward
the parkland was silvered with moonlight and black with shadows, which
under the groups of chestnuts seemed like moving shapes.

He leant out far and the cold night air shivered by. That was familiar
and good to feel, but the glare northward caught his eyes again, and
held him fascinated. It rose and fell, now blushing softly against a
velvet sky, now flaring angrily to heaven. It seemed to quiver with
voices that were harsh and threatening. It filled Christopher's heart
with unreasonable horror against which he struggled in vain, as with
the dim terror of a stranger. At last he closed the window and shut it
out.

"I don't like it," said Christopher half aloud. "It's all right, it's
only a foundry, but I hate it."

With that he went to bed and in the dark the dance of the fires
flickered before his eyes.

The next few days were spent in gathering fresh impressions and
disentangling bewildering experiences, and in small encounters with
the unanswerable will of his host.

He was taken to the great offices in Birmingham, and the wonderful
system by which each vast machine was worked was explained to him. He
was even privileged to sit with the great man in the i