ed with Howard he had
observed no windows at all. Had there been windows? There were windows
on the street indeed, but were they for light? Or was the whole city lit
day and night for evermore, so that there was no night there?

And another thing dawned upon him. There was no fireplace in either
room. Was the season summer, and were these merely summer apartments, or
was the whole City uniformly heated or cooled? He became interested in
these questions, began examining the smooth texture of the walls, the
simply constructed bed, the ingenious arrangements by which the labour
of bedroom service was practically abolished. And over everything was a
curious absence of deliberate ornament, a bare grace of form and
colour, that he found very pleasing to the eye. There were several very
comfortable chairs, a light table on silent runners carrying several
bottles of fluids and glasses, and two plates bearing a clear substance
like jelly. Then he noticed there were no books, no newspapers, no
writing materials. "The world has changed indeed," he said.

He observed one entire side of the outer room was set with rows of
peculiar double cylinders inscribed with green lettering on white that
harmonized With the decorative scheme of the room, and in the centre of
this side projected a little apparatus about a yard square and having a
white smooth face to the room. A chair faced this. He had a transitory
idea that these cylinders might be books, or a modern substitute for
books, but at first it did not seem so.

The lettering on the cylinders puzzled him. At first sight it seemed
like Russian. Then he noticed a suggestion of mutilated English about
certain of the words.

"oi Man huwdbi Kin"

forced itself on him as "The Man who would be King." "Phonetic
spelling," he said. He remembered reading a story with that title, then
he recalled the story vividly, one of the best stories in the world. But
this thing before him was not a book as he understood it. He puzzled out
the titles of two adjacent cylinders. 'The Heart of Darkness,' he had
never heard of before nor 'The Madonna of the Future'--no doubt if they
were indeed stories, they were by post Victorian authors.

He puzzled over this peculiar cylinder for some time and replaced it.
Then he turned to the square apparatus and examined that. He opened a
sort of lid and found one of the double cylinders within, and on the
upper edge a little stud like the stud of