ople with a turn that way have gone. We're going through with
it--to the end."

Elizabeth thought grayly, and realised that this also was true.

"We're going through with it. To think of all who have gone through with
it: all the generations--endless--endless. Little beasts that snapped
and snarled, snapping and snarling, snapping and snarling, generation
after generation."

His monotone, ended abruptly, resumed after a vast interval.

"There were ninety thousand years of stone age. A Denton somewhere in
all those years. Apostolic succession. The grace of going through. Let
me see! Ninety--nine hundred--three nines, twenty-seven--_three
thousand_ generations of men!--men more or less. And each fought, and
was bruised, and shamed, and somehow held his own--going through with
it--passing it on.... And thousands more to come perhaps--thousands!

"Passing it on. I wonder if they will thank us."

His voice assumed an argumentative note. "If one could find something
definite ... If one could say, 'This is why--this is why it goes
on....'"

He became still, and Elizabeth's eyes slowly separated him from the
darkness until at last she could see how he sat with his head resting on
his hand. A sense of the enormous remoteness of their minds came to her;
that dim suggestion of another being seemed to her a figure of their
mutual understanding. What could he be thinking now? What might he not
say next? Another age seemed to elapse before he sighed and whispered:
"No. I don't understand it. No!" Then a long interval, and he repeated
this. But the second time it had the tone almost of a solution.

She became aware that he was preparing to lie down. She marked his
movements, perceived with astonishment how he adjusted his pillow with a
careful regard to comfort. He lay down with a sigh of contentment
almost. His passion had passed. He lay still, and presently his
breathing became regular and deep.

But Elizabeth remained with eyes wide open in the darkness, until the
clamour of a bell and the sudden brilliance of the electric light warned
them that the Labour Company had need of them for yet another day.

That day came a scuffle with the albino Whitey and the little
ferret-faced man. Blunt, the swart artist in scrapping, having first
let Denton grasp the bearing of his lesson, intervened, not without a
certain quality of patronage. "Drop 'is 'air, Whitey, and let the man
be," said his gross voice through a shower of indigni