THE DREAM _A NOVEL_ BY H. G. WELLS New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1924 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1923 and 1924, BY H. G. WELLS. Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1924. Printed in the United States of America by THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK. CONTENTS CHAPTER THE FIRST THE EXCURSION CHAPTER THE SECOND THE BEGINNING OF THE DREAM CHAPTER THE THIRD MISFORTUNES COME UPON THE SMITH FAMILY CHAPTER THE FOURTH THE WIDOW SMITH MOVES TO LONDON CHAPTER THE FIFTH FANNY DISCOVERS HERSELF CHAPTER THE SIXTH MARRIAGE IN WAR TIME CHAPTER THE SEVENTH LOVE AND DEATH CHAPTER THE EIGHTH THE EPILOGUE PART I How Harry Mortimer Smith Was Made THE DREAM CHAPTER THE FIRST THE EXCURSION § 1 Sarnac had worked almost continuously for the better part of a year upon some very subtle chemical reactions of the nervous cells of the sympathetic system. His first enquiries had led to the opening out of fresh and surprising possibilities, and these again had lured him on to still broader and more fascinating prospects. He worked perhaps too closely; he found his hope and curiosity unimpaired, but there was less delicacy of touch in his manipulation, and he was thinking less quickly and accurately. He needed a holiday. He had come to the end of a chapter in his work and wished to brace himself for a new beginning. Sunray had long hoped to be away with him; she, too, was at a phase in her work when interruption was possible, and so the two went off together to wander among the lakes and mountains. Their companionship was at a very delightful stage. Their close relationship and their friendship was of old standing, so that they were quite at their ease with one another, yet they were not too familiar to have lost the keen edge of their interest in each other's proceedings. Sunray was very much in love with Sarnac and glad, and Sarnac was always happy and pleasantly exalted when Sunray was near him. Sunray was the richer-hearted and cleverer lover. They talked of everything in the world but Sarnac's work because that had to rest and grow fresh again. Of her own work Sunray talked abundantly. She had been making stories and pictures of happiness and sorrow in the past ages of the world, and she was full of curious speculations about the ways in which the ancestral mind has thought and felt.