"I have eaten two biscuits and a little cheese in the last twenty-four hours. Surely you don't think that food is to be a serious problem under such circumstances?" "It might be. You must remember that initiative is now destroyed in the vast majority of people. They may permit themselves to die of inanition. Can you say you have an appetite now?" I reflected for some time, striving to recall the feeling of hunger that belonged to the days of desire. "No. I have no appetite." "Think carefully. In place of appetite have you no tendencies?" "I feel a kind of lethargy," I said at last. "I felt it yesterday and to-day it is stronger." "As if you wished to sleep?" "Not exactly. But it is akin to that. I have some difficulty in keeping my attention on things. There is a kind of pull within me away from--away from reality." He nodded. "I went in to see your Russian friend. He's upstairs. He is not exactly asleep. He is more like a man partially under the influence of a drug." "I will go and see him," I said. Sarakoff was lying on the bed with his eyes shut. He was breathing quietly. His eyelids quivered, as if they might open at any moment, but my entrance did not rouse him. His limbs were relaxed. I spoke to him and tried to wake him, without result. Then I remembered how I had stumbled across the body of Herbert Wain in the Park some days ago. He had seemed to be in a strange kind of sleep. I sat down on the bed and stared at the motionless figure of the Russian. There was something strangely pathetic in his pose. His rough hair and black beard, his keen aquiline face seemed weirdly out of keeping with his helpless state. Here lay the man whose brain had once teemed with ambitious desires, relaxed and limp like a baby, while the nails of his hands, turquoise blue, bore silent witness to his great experiment on humanity. Had it failed? Where was all that marvellous vision of physical happiness that had haunted him? The streets of London were filled with people, no longer working, no longer crying or weeping, but moving aimlessly, like people in a dream. Were they happy? I moved to the window and drew down the blind. "This may be the end," I thought. "The germ will be sweeping through France now. It may be the end of all things." I rejoined Thornduck in the study. "Sarakoff is in a kind of trance," I observed. "What do you make of it?" "Isn't it natural?" he asked. "What kind of a man was he? What motives did he work on? Just think what the killing of desire means. All those things that depended on worldly ambition, self-gratification, physical pleasure, conceit, lust, hatred, passion, egotism, selfishness, vanity, avarice, sensuality and so on, are undermined and rendered paralysed by the germ. What remains? Why, in most people, practically nothing remains." "Even so," I said, "I don't see why Sarakoff should go into a trance."