of the past, the inestimable unintentional owner of the world. Wherever
there were lights or dense crowds, or exceptional excitement, he was
afraid of recognition, and watched and turned back or went up and down by
the middle stairways, into some transverse system of ways at a lower or
higher level. And though he came on no more fighting, the whole city
stirred with battle. Once he had to run to avoid a marching multitude of
men that swept the street. Everyone abroad seemed involved. For the most
part they were men, and they carried what he judged were weapons. It
seemed as though the struggle was concentrated mainly in the quarter of
the city from which he came. Ever and again a distant roaring, the
remote suggestion of that conflict, reached his ears. Then his caution
and his curiosity struggled together. But his caution prevailed, and he
continued wandering away from the fighting--so far as he could judge. He
went unmolested, unsuspected through the dark. After a time he ceased to
hear even a remote echo of the battle, fewer and fewer people passed him,
until at last the streets became deserted. The frontages of the buildings
grew plain, and harsh; he seemed to have come to a district of vacant
warehouses. Solitude crept upon him--his pace slackened.

He became aware of a growing fatigue. At times he would turn aside and
sit down on one of the numerous benches of the upper ways. But a feverish
restlessness, the knowledge of his vital implication in this struggle,
would not let him rest in any place for long. Was the struggle on his
behalf alone?

And then in a desolate place came the shock of an earthquake--a roaring
and thundering--a mighty wind of cold air pouring through the city, the
smash of glass, the slip and thud of falling masonry--a series of
gigantic concussions. A mass of glass and ironwork fell from the remote
roofs into the middle gallery, not a hundred yards away from him, and in