ll, and had that brought him rest?
What was it that drove him away again? The steel, the steel and the
fire.

Ah! that day when he had stepped down from the mowing machine and had
been ensnared by the idea of improving it. Why had he ever taken it
up? Did he need money? No. Or was the work at a standstill? No. But the
steel would on; it had need of a man; it had taken him by the throat and
said, "You shall!"

Happiness? Rest? Ah no! For, you see, a stored-up mass of knowledge and
experience turns one fine day into an army of evil powers, that lash
you on and on, unceasingly. You may stumble, you may fall--what does
it matter? The steel squeezes one man dry, and then grips the next. The
flame of the world has need of fuel--bow thy head, Man, and leap into
the fire.

To-day you prosper--to-morrow you are cast down into a hell on earth.
What matter? You are fuel for the fire.

But I will not, I will not be swallowed up in the flame of the world,
even though it be the only godhead in the universe. I will tear myself
loose, be something in and for myself. I will have an immortal soul.
The world-transformation that progress may have wrought a thousand years
hence--what is it to me?

Your soul? Just think of all your noble feelings towards that true-born
half-brother of yours--ha-ha-ha! Shakespeare was wrong. It's the bastard
that gets cheated.

"Dearest Peer, do, for God's sake, try to get to sleep."

"Oh yes. I'll get to sleep all right. But it's so hot." He threw off the
clothes and lay breathing heavily.

"I'm sure you're lying thinking and brooding over things. Can't you do
what the Swedish doctor told you--just try to think that everything is
dark all round you."

Peer turns round, and everything around him is dark. But in the heart of
that darkness waves arise, waves of melody, rolling nearer, nearer.
It is the sound of a hymn--it is Louise standing playing, his sister
Louise. And what peace--O God, what peace and rest!

But soon Louise fades away, she fades away, and vanishes like a flame
blown out. And there comes a roaring noise, nearer and nearer, grinding,
crashing, rattling--and he knows now what it is only too well: it is the
song of the steel.

The roar of steel from ships and from railway-trains, with their pairs
of yellow evil eyes, rushing on, full of human captives, whither?
Faster, faster--driven by competition, by the steel demon that hunts men
on without rest or respite--that hurries on the