el.... Oh, this accursed world!"

She tried to speak, and for some moments could not. She grasped his
hand. "No," she said at last.

A half-formed desire suddenly became determination. She stood up. "Will
you come?"

He rose also. "We need not go there yet."

"Not that. But I want you to come to the flying stages--where we met.
You know? The little seat."

He hesitated. "_Can_ you?" he said, doubtfully.

"Must," she answered.

He hesitated still for a moment, then moved to obey her will.

And so it was they spent their last half-day of freedom out under the
open air in the little seat under the flying stages where they had been
wont to meet five short years ago. There she told him, what she could
not tell him in the tumultuous public ways, that she did not repent even
now of their marriage--that whatever discomfort and misery life still
had for them, she was content with the things that had been. The weather
was kind to them, the seat was sunlit and warm, and overhead the shining
aeroplanes went and came.

At last towards sunsetting their time was at an end, and they made their
vows to one another and clasped hands, and then rose up and went back
into the ways of the city, a shabby-looking, heavy-hearted pair, tired
and hungry. Soon they came to one of the pale blue signs that marked a
Labour Company Bureau. For a space they stood in the middle way
regarding this and at last descended, and entered the waiting-room.

The Labour Company had originally been a charitable organisation; its
aim was to supply food, shelter, and work to all comers. This it was
bound to do by the conditions of its incorporation, and it was also
bound to supply food and shelter and medical attendance to all incapable
of work who chose to demand its aid. In exchange these incapables paid
labour notes, which they had to redeem upon recovery. They signed these
labour notes with thumb-marks, which were photographed and indexed in
such a way that this world-wide Labour Company could identify any one of
its two or three hundred million clients at the cost of an hour's
inquiry. The day's labour was defined as two spells in a treadmill used
in generating electrical force, or its equivalent, and its due
performance could be enforced by law. In practice the Labour Company
found it advisable to add to its statutory obligations of food and
shelter a few pence a day as an inducement to effort; and its enterprise
had not only abolished pauperisatio