nd pointed to the half
open door into the hall. This man was shouting close to his ear and yet
what was said was indistinct because of the tremendous uproar from the
great theatre. Behind the man was a girl in a silvery grey robe, whom
Graham, even in this confusion, perceived to be beautiful. Her dark eyes,
full of wonder and curiosity, were fixed on him, her lips trembled apart.
A partially opened door gave a glimpse of the crowded hall, and admitted
a vast uneven tumult, a hammering, clapping and shouting that died away
and began again, and rose to a thunderous pitch, and so continued
intermittently all the time that Graham remained in the little room. He
watched the lips of the man in black and gathered that he was making some
explanation.

He stared stupidly for some moments at these things and then stood up
abruptly; he grasped the arm of this shouting person.

"Tell me!" he cried. "Who am I? Who am I?"

The others came nearer to hear his words. "Who am I?" His eyes searched
their faces.

"They have told him nothing!" cried the girl.

"Tell me, tell me!" cried Graham.

"You are the Master of the Earth. You are owner of the world."

He did not believe he heard aright. He resisted the persuasion. He
pretended not to understand, not to hear. He lifted his voice again. "I
have been awake three days--a prisoner three days. I judge there is some
struggle between a number of people in this city--it is London?"

"Yes," said the younger man.

"And those who meet in the great hall with the white Atlas? How does it
concern me? In some way it has to do with me. _Why_, I don't know. Drugs?
It seems to me that while I have slept the world has gone mad. I have
gone mad.... Who are those Councillors under the Atlas? Why should they
try to drug me?"

"To keep you insensible," said the man in yellow. "To prevent your
interference."

"But _why_?"

"Because _you_ are the Atlas, Sire," said the man in yellow. "The world
is on your shoulders. They rule it in your name."

The sounds from the hall had died into a silence threaded by one
monotonous voice. Now suddenly, trampling on these last words, came a
deafening tumult, a roaring and thundering, cheer crowded on cheer,
voices hoarse and shrill, beating, overlapping, and while it lasted the
people in the little room could not hear each other shout.

Graham stood, his intelligence clinging helplessly to the thing he had
just heard. "The Council," he repeated blankly, a