then been invented at last, some automaton to supply the place of
such poor creatures as herself to turn out books and articles?
Alas! the machine was only one for holding volumes conveniently,
that the work of literary manufacture might be physically
lightened. But surely before long some Edison would make the true
automaton; the problem must be comparatively such a simple one.
Only to throw in a given number of old books, and have them
reduced, blended, modernised into a single one for to-day's
consumption.

The fog grew thicker; she looked up at the windows beneath the
dome and saw that they were a dusky yellow. Then her eye
discerned an official walking along the upper gallery, and in
pursuance of her grotesque humour, her mocking misery, she
likened him to a black, lost soul, doomed to wander in an
eternity of vain research along endless shelves. Or again, the
readers who sat here at these radiating lines of desks, what were
they but hapless flies caught in a huge web, its nucleus the
great circle of the Catalogue? Darker, darker. From the towering
wall of volumes seemed to emanate visible motes, intensifying the
obscurity; in a moment the book-lined circumference of the room
would be but a featureless prison-limit.

But then flashed forth the sputtering whiteness of the electric
light, and its ceaseless hum was henceforth a new source of
headache. It reminded her how little work she had done to-day;
she must, she must force herself to think of the task in hand. A
machine has no business to refuse its duty. But the pages were
blue and green and yellow before her eyes; the uncertainty of the
light was intolerable. Right or wrong she would go home, and hide