Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 9.pdf/350

 scar in an ill-dressed compound wound, but so—not I! This is a dream too—this world. Your dream, and you bring me back to it—out of Utopia"

The crossing of Bow Street gives me pause again.

The face of a girl who is passing westward, a student girl rather carelessly dressed, her books in a carrying-strap, comes across my field of vision. The westward sun of London glows upon her face. She has eyes that dream, surely no sensuous nor personal dream.

After all, after all, dispersed, hidden, disorganised, undiscovered, unsuspected even by themselves, the samurai of Utopia are in this world, the motives that are developed and organised there stir dumbly here and stifle in ten thousand futile hearts

I overtake the botanist, who got ahead at the crossing by the advantage of a dust-cart.

"You think this is real because you can't wake out of it," I say. "It's all a dream, and there are people—I'm just one of the first of a multitude—between sleeping and waking—who will presently be rubbing it out of their eyes."

A pinched and dirty little girl, with sores upon her face, stretches out a bunch of wilting violets in a pitifully thin little fist, and interrupts my speech. "Bunch o' vi'lets—on'y a penny."

"No!" I say curtly, hardening my heart.

A ragged and filthy nursing mother, with her last addition to our Imperial People on her arm, comes out of a drinkshop and stands a little unsteadily, and wipes mouth and nose comprehensively with the back of a red chapped hand