And with the coming of darkness,
the city blazed with living light!

"The pictures changed, showed other mighty cities, though none so
terrible as that one. It showed great mechanisms that appalled me. Giant
metal things that scooped in an instant from the earth as much as a man
might dig in days. Vast things that poured molten metal from them like
water. Others that lifted loads that hundreds of men and oxen could not
have stirred.

"They showed men of knowledge like Rastin and Thicourt beside me. Some
were healers, working miraculous cures in a way that I could not
understand. Others were gazing through giant tubes at the stars, and the
pictures showed what they saw, showed that all of the stars were great
suns like our sun, and that our sun was greater than earth, that earth
moved around it instead of the reverse! How could such things be, I
wondered. Yet they said that it was so, that earth was round like an
apple, and that with other earths like it, the planets, moved round the
sun. I heard, but could scarce understand.

"At last Rastin and Thicourt led me out of that place of living pictures
and to their ground-vehicle. We went again through the streets to their
building, where first I had found myself. As we went I saw that none
challenged my right to go, nor asked who was my lord. And Rastin said
that none now had lords, but that all were lord, king and priest and
noble, having no more power than any in the land. Each man was his own
master! It was what I had hardly dared to hope for, in my own time, and
this, I thought, was greatest of all the marvels they had shown me!

"We entered again their building but Rastin and Thicourt took me first
to another room than the one in which I had found myself. They said that
their men of knowledge were gathered there to hear of their feat, and to
have it proved to them.

"'You would not be afraid to return to your own time, Henri?' asked
Rastin, and I shook my head.

"'I want to return to it,' I told them. 'I want to tell my people there
what I have seen--what the future is that they must strive for.'

"'But if they should not believe you?' Thicourt asked.

"'Still I must go--must tell them,' I said.

"Rastin grasped my hand. 'You are a man, Henri,' he said. Then, throwing
aside the cloak and hat I had worn outside, they went with me down to
the big white-walled room where first I had found myself.

"It was lit brightly now by many of the shining glass things on