heard? Why is a great multitude
shouting and excited because my trance is over, and who are the men in
white in that huge council chamber?"

"All in good time, Sire," said Howard. "But not crudely, not crudely.
This is one of those flimsy times when no man has a settled mind. Your
awakening--no one expected your awakening. The Council is consulting."

"What council?"

"The Council you saw."

Graham made a petulant movement. "This is not right," he said. "I should
be told what is happening."

"You must wait. Really you must wait."

Graham sat down abruptly. "I suppose since I have waited so long to
resume life," he said, "that I must wait a little longer."

"That is better," said Howard. "Yes, that is much better. And I must
leave you alone. For a space. While I attend the discussion in the
Council.... I am sorry."

He went towards the noiseless door, hesitated and vanished.

Graham walked to the door, tried it, found it securely fastened in some
way he never came to understand, turned about, paced the room restlessly,
made the circuit of the room, and sat down. He remained sitting for some
time with folded arms and knitted brow, biting his finger nails and
trying to piece together the kaleidoscopic impressions of this first hour
of awakened life; the vast mechanical spaces, the endless series of
chambers and passages, the great struggle that roared and splashed
through these strange ways, the little group of remote unsympathetic men
beneath the colossal Atlas, Howard's mysterious behaviour. There was an
inkling of some vast inheritance already in his mind--a vast inheritance
perhaps misapplied--of some unprecedented importance and opportunity.
What had he to do? And this room's secluded silence was eloquent of
imprisonment!

It came into Graham's mind with irresistible conviction that this series
of magnificent impressions was a dream. He tried to shut his eyes and
succeeded, but that time-honoured device led to no awakening.

Presently he began to touch and examine all the unfamiliar appointments
of the two small rooms in which he found himself.

In a long oval panel of mirror he saw himself and stopped astonished. He
was clad in a graceful costume of purple and bluish white, with a little
greyshot beard trimmed to a point, and his hair, its blackness streaked
now with bands of grey, arranged over his forehead in an unfamiliar but
pleasing manner. He seemed a man of five-and-forty perhaps. For a moment