In the Days of the CometWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Science
In the Days of the Comet
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Comets -- Collisions with Earth -- Fiction; Political fiction; Science fiction; Utopian fiction; Utopias -- Fiction
“There was Verrall.”
Then suddenly it came to me that the thoughts that stirred in my mind
were sinister and base, that the queer suspicions, the coarseness and
coarse jealousies of my old world were over and done for these more
finely living souls. “You made,” I said, trying to be liberal minded,
“a home together.”
“A home!” He looked at me, and, I know not why, I glanced down at my
feet. What a clumsy, ill-made thing a boot is, and how hard and
colorless seemed my clothing! How harshly I stood out amidst these
fine, perfected things. I had a moment of rebellious detestation. I
wanted to get out of all this. After all, it wasn’t my style. I wanted
intensely to say something that would bring him down a peg, make sure,
as it were, of my suspicions by launching an offensive accusation. I
looked up and he was standing.
“I forgot,” he said. “You are pretending the old world is still going
on. A home!”
He put out his hand, and quite noiselessly the great window widened
down to us, and the splendid nearer prospect of that dreamland city was
before me. There for one clear moment I saw it; its galleries and open
spaces, its trees of golden fruit and crystal waters, its music and
rejoicing, love and beauty without ceasing flowing through its varied
and intricate streets. And the nearer people I saw now directly and
plainly, and no longer in the distorted mirror that hung overhead. They
really did not justify my suspicions, and yet—! They were such people
as one sees on earth—save that they were changed. How can I express
that change? As a woman is changed in the eyes of her lover, as a woman
is changed by the love of a lover. They were exalted. . . .
I stood up beside him and looked out. I was a little flushed, my ears a
little reddened, by the inconvenience of my curiosities, and by my
uneasy sense of profound moral differences. He was taller than I. . . .
“This is our home,” he said smiling, and with thoughtful eyes on me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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