cap--what was it? "

The man with the flaxen beard glanced over his
shoulder.

"Here are your clothes!" he said. Graham turned
round sharply and saw the tailorstanding at his elbow

smiling, and holding some palpably new garments over
his arm. The crop-headed boy, by means of one

finger, was impelling the complicated machine towards
the lift by which he had arrived. Graham stared at

the completed suit. "You don't mean to say--!"
"Just made," said the tailor. He dropped the garments

at the feet of Graham, walked to the bed on
which Graham had so recently been Iying, flung out

the translucent mattress, and turned up the looking
glass. As he did so a furious bell summoned the

thickset man to the corner. The man with the flaxen
beard rushed across to him and then hurried out by

the archway.
The tailor was assisting Graham into a dark purple

combination garment, stockings, vest, and pants in
one, as the thickset man came back from the corner

to meet the man with the flaxen beard returning from
the balcony. They began speaking quickly in an

undertone, their bearing had an unmistakable quality
of anxiety. Over the purple under-garment came a I

complex but gracefulgarment of bluish white, and I
Graham was clothed in the fashion once more and saw

himself, sallow-faced, unshaven and shaggy still, but
at least naked no longer, and in some indefinable

unprecedented way graceful.
"I must shave," he said regarding himself in the

glass.
"In a moment," said Howard.

The persistent stare ceased. The young man closed
his eyes, reopened them, and with a lean hand

extended, advanced on Graham. Then he stopped,
with his hand slowly gesticulating, and looked about

him.
"A seat," said Howard impatiently, and in a moment

the flaxen-bearded man had a chair behind Graham.
"Sit down, please," said Howard.

Graham hesitated, and in the other hand of the wildeyed
man he saw the glint of steel.

"Don't you understand, Sire?" cried the flaxen-bearded
man with hurriedpoliteness. "He is going

to cut your hair."
"Oh!" cried Graham enlightened. "But you

called him--
"A capillotomist--precisely ! He is one of the

finest artists in the world."
Graham sat down abruptly. The flaxen-bearded

man disappeared. The capillotomist came forward
with graceful gestures, examined Graham's ears and

surveyed him, felt the back of his head, and would
have sat down again to regard him but for Howard's

audible impatience. Forthwith with rapid movements
and a succession of deftly handled implements he

shaved Graham's chin, clipped his moustache, and cut
and arranged his hair. All this he did without a word,

with something of the rapt air of a poet inspired. And
as soon as he had finished Graham was handed a pair

of shoes.
Suddenly a loud voice shouted--it seemed from a

piece of machinery in the corner--"At once--at
once. The people know all over the city. Work is

being stopped. Work is being stopped. Wait for
nothing, but come."

This shout appeared to perturb Howard exceedingly.
By his gestures it seemed to Graham that he

hesitated between two directions. Abruptly he went
towards the corner where the apparatus stood about

the little crystal ball. As he did so the undertone of
tumultuous shouting from the archway that had continued

during all these occurrences rose to a mighty
sound, roared as if it were sweeping past, and fell

again as if receding swiftly. It drew Graham after it
with an irresistibleattraction. He glanced at the

thickset man, and then obeyed his impulse. In two
strides he was down the steps and in the passage, and,

in a score he was out upon the balcony upon which |
the three men had been standing.

CHAPTER V
THE MOVING WAYS

He went to the railings of the balcony and stared
upward. An exclamation of surprise at his appearance,

and the movements of a number of people came
from the spacious area below.

His first impression was of overwhelming architecture.
The place into which he looked was an aisle of

Titanic buildings, curving spaciously in either direction.
Overhead mighty cantilevers sprang together

across the huge width of the place, and a tracery of
translucent material shut out the sky. Gigantic

globes of cool white light shamed the pale sunbeams
that filtered down through the girders and wires.

Here and there a gossamer suspensionbridge dotted
with foot passengers flung across the chasm and the

air was webbed with slender cables. A cliff of edifice
hung above him, he perceived as he glanced upward,

and the opposite facade was grey and dim and broken
by great archings, circular perforations, balconies,

buttresses, turret projections, myriads of vast windows,
and an intricatescheme of architectural relief.

Athwart these ran inscriptions horizontally and
obliquely in an unfamiliar lettering. Here and there

close to the roof cables of a peculiar stoutness were
fastened, and drooped in a steep curve to circular

openings on the opposite side of the space, and even
as Graham noted these a remote and tiny figure of a

man clad in pale blue arrested his attention. This little
figure was far overhead across the space beside the

higher fastening of one of these festoons, hanging
forward from a little ledge of masonry and handling some

well-nigh invisible strings dependent from the line.
Then suddenly, with a swoop that sent Graham's heart

into his mouth, this man had rushed down the curve
and vanished through a round opening on the hither

side of the way. Graham had been looking up as he
came out upon the balcony, and the things he saw

above and opposed to him had at first seized his
attention to the exclusion of anything else. Then suddenly

he discovered the roadway! It was not a roadway at
all, as Graham understood such things, for in the

nineteenth century the only roads and streets were
beaten tracks of motionless" target="_blank" title="a.静止的；固定的">motionless earth, jostling rivulets of

vehicles between narrow footways. But this roadway
was three hundred feet across, and it moved; it moved,

all save the middle, the lowest part. For a moment,
the motion dazzled his mind. Then he understood.

Under the balcony this extraordinaryroadway ran
swiftly to Graham's right, an endless flow rushing