Page:The world set free.djvu/283

 inflict vision upon us, spare our little ways of life from the fearful shaft of understanding. But do tricks for us, little limited tricks. Give us cheap lighting. And cure us of certain disagreeable things, cure us of cancer, cure us of consumption, cure our colds and relieve us after repletion.' We have changed all that, Gardener. Science is no longer our servant. We know it for something greater than our little individual selves. It is the awakening mind of the race, and in a little while—In a little whileI wish indeed I could watch for that little while, now that the curtain has risen

'While I lie here they are clearing up what is left of the bombs in London," he said. "Then they are going to repair the ruins and make it all as like as possible to its former condition before the bombs fell. Perhaps they will dig out the old house in St John's Wood to which my father went after his expulsion from Russia That London of my memories seems to me like a place in another world. For you younger people it must seem like a place that could never have existed."

"Is there much left standing?" asked Edith Haydon.

"Square miles that are scarcely shaken in the south and north-west, they say; and most of the