"Yes, I suppose there's absolutely nothing to be done but sit down and wait," said Gurney. "Personally," returned Thrale, "I have no intention of spending my time flying from country to country like a marked criminal. That way leads to insanity. I've seen men become animals before now under the influence of fear." "Yes, of course, you're quite right," agreed Gurney. "One must exercise self-control. After all, it's only death, and not such a terrible death at that." He got up and began to pace the room restlessly, then went to the window and looked out. Jermyn Street was almost deserted, but distant sounds of shouting came from the direction of Piccadilly. He left the window open and turned back into the room. "It's so infernally hard just to sit still and wait," he said. "If only one could do something." "I doubt, now," said Thrale, quietly, "whether one could ever have done anything. The public and the Government took my warnings in the characteristic way, the only possible way in which you could expect twentieth-century humanity to take a warning--a thrill of fear, perhaps, in some cases; frank incredulity in others; but no result either way that endured for an hour.... Belief in national and personal security, inertia outside the routine of necessary, stereotyped employment; these things are essential to the running of the machine." "I suppose they are," agreed Gurney absently He had sat down again and was sucking automatically at an extinguished pipe. "In a complex civilization," went on Thrale "any initiative on the part of the individual outside his own tiny sphere of energy is just so much grit in the machine. There are recognized methods, they may not be the best, the most efficient, but they are accepted and understood. Every clerk who has to calculate twelve pence to the shilling knows how his work would be lightened if he had only to calculate ten, but he accepts that difficulty, because he can do nothing as an individual to introduce the decimal system. And that spirit of acceptance grows upon him until the individual has the characteristics of the class. Only when a man is stirred by too great discomfort does he open his eyes to the possibility of initiative; then come labour strikes. If labour had a sufficiency of ease and comfort, if its lot were not so violently contrasted with that of even the middle-classes, labour would settle down to complacency. But the contrast is too great, and to attain that complacency of uninitiative we must level down. That was coming; that would have come if this plague...." "What was that?" asked Gurney excitedly, jumping to his feet. "Did you hear firing?" He went to the window again, and leaned out. From Piccadilly came the sound of an army of trampling feet, of confused cries and shouting. "By God, there's a riot," exclaimed Gurney. He spoke over his shoulder. Thrale joined him at the window. "Panic," he said. "Senseless, hysterical panic. It won't last."