person of
significance--of very considerable significance--involved in the world's
affairs."

He stopped.

"Yes?" said Graham.

"We have grave social troubles."

"Yes?"

"Things have come to such a pass that, in fact, is advisable to seclude
you here."

"Keep me prisoner!" exclaimed Graham.

"Well--to ask you to keep in seclusion."

Graham turned on him. "This is strange!" he said.

"No harm will be done you."

"No harm!"

"But you must be kept here--"

"While I learn my position, I presume."

"Precisely."

"Very well then. Begin. Why _harm?_"

"Not now."

"Why not?"

"It is too long a story, Sire."

"All the more reason I should begin at once. You say I am a person of
importance. What was that shouting I 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 secl