THE ETERNAL MOMENT and Other Stories By E. M. FORSTER New York HARCOURT, BRACE & COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY QUINN & BODEN COMPANY, INC. RAHWAY, N. J. _To_ T. E. IN THE ABSENCE OF ANYTHING ELSE _These stories were written at various dates previous to 1914, and represent, together with those in the_ CELESTIAL OMNIBUS _volume, all that I am likely to accomplish in a particular line. Much has happened since; transport has been disorganised, frontiers rectified on the map and in the spirit, and under the mass-shock of facts Fantasy has tended to retreat or at all events to dig herself in. She can be caught in the open here by those who care to catch her. She flits over the scenes of Italian and English holidays, or wings her way with even less justification towards the countries of the future. She or he. For Fantasy, though often a lady, sometimes resembles a man, and even functions for Hermes who used to do the smaller behests of the gods--messenger, machine-breaker, and conductor of souls to a not too terrible hereafter._ _One of the stories appeared in the_ ATLANTIC MONTHLY _and is reprinted by courtesy of its editor; the rest, as far as I know, have never been published in America._ CONTENTS THE MACHINE STOPS THE POINT OF IT MR. ANDREWS CO-ORDINATION THE STORY OF THE SIREN THE ETERNAL MOMENT THE MACHINE STOPS _Part I_ THE AIR-SHIP Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An arm-chair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk--that is all the furniture. And in the arm-chair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh--a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs. An electric bell rang. The woman touched a switch and the music was silent. "I suppose I must see who it is," she thought, and set her chair in motion. The chair, like the music, was worked by machinery, and it rolled her to the other side of the room, where the bell still rang importunately.