f the State,
attractive places that year after year draw together all that is weak and
vicious, all that is lascivious and lazy, all the easy roguery of the
world, to a graceful destruction. They go there, they have their time,
they die childless, all the pretty silly lascivious women die childless,
and mankind is the better. If the people were sane they would not envy
the rich their way of death. And you would emancipate the silly brainless
workers that we have enslaved, and try to make their lives easy and
pleasant again. Just as they have sunk to what they are fit for." He
smiled a smile that irritated Graham oddly. "You will learn better. I
know those ideas; in my boyhood I read your Shelley and dreamt of
Liberty. There is no liberty, save wisdom and self-control. Liberty is
within--not without. It is each man's own affair. Suppose--which is
impossible--that these swarming yelping fools in blue get the upper hand
of us, what then? They will only fall to other masters. So long as there
are sheep Nature will insist on beasts of prey. It would mean but a few
hundred years' delay. The coming of the aristocrat is fatal and assured.
The end will be the Over-man--for all the mad protests of humanity. Let
them revolt, let them win and kill me and my like. Others will
arise--other masters. The end will be the same."

"I wonder," said Graham doggedly.

For a moment he stood downcast.

"But I must see these things for myself," he said, suddenly assuming a
tone of confident mastery. "Only by seeing can I understand. I must
learn. That is what I want to tell you, Ostrog. I do not want to be King
in a Pleasure City; that is not my pleasure. I have spent enough time
with aeronautics--and those other things. I must learn how people live
now, how the common life has developed. Then I shall understand these
things better. I must learn how common people live--the labour people
more especially--how they work, marry, bear children, die--"

"You get that from our realistic novelists," suggested Ostrog, suddenly
preoccupied.

"I want reality," said Graham.

"There are difficulties," said Ostrog, and thought. "On the whole--"

"I did not expect--"

"I had thought--. And yet perhaps--. You say you want to go through the
ways of the city and see the common people."

Suddenly he came to some conclusion. "You would need to go disguised," he
said. "The city is intensely excited, and the discovery of your presence
among them might cre