He fell silent; and for a time we sat without speaking. When he spoke again, I could see the lines on which his thoughts had been running. “If anything happens to me, Jack, you’ll look after Elsa, won’t you? I’d like to know that she was all right. I know it’s hard as things are; but you’ll do that for me, even though it tantalises you?” I promised; and then I suggested telephoning for a doctor to look after him. “Not just now, Jack--I’m tired. I don’t want to be bothered answering questions. I’m very tired.... And I’ve finished my work at last. We’ve pulled through. I can take a rest.... Wake me in a quarter of an hour, will you? I want a sleep badly.” He leaned forward in his chair and rested his face on his arms. In a moment he seemed to fall into slumber. I thought it was probably the best thing for him at the time; and I turned to the fire and to my thoughts. I fell to thinking of all that had happened since first I met him; and then I cast further back yet to the evening I had spent at Wotherspoon’s house. How the disaster had developed step by step, spreading its effects gradually and with slowly-increasing intensity over wider and ever-wider areas. If only Wotherspoon had stuck to chemistry and left bacteriology alone; if only he had chosen some other organisms than the denitrifying bacteria; if only the fire-ball had not come that night; if ... if ... if.... All the Might-have-beens rose before me as I gazed at the flickerings in the fire. If only Elsa had followed reason and not emotion ... if only.... And so the maddening train of thought went on, minute by minute, while in the next room I could hear the click of her typewriter. Emotion! After all I could not pretend to scorn it, for what were my own feelings but emotion too? The clock in the tower above me struck a quarter. Nordenholt did not stir and I let him sleep on. It appeared to me that rest was what he needed most. It seemed curious how divorced I had become from the Past. The old life had been swept away utterly and I found difficulty in recalling much of it to mind. The meeting with Nordenholt, the founding of the Area, my time with Elsa, London in its last days, the Reverend John: these were the things which seemed burned into my memory. All that had gone before was mirage, faint, unsubstantial, part of another existence. Even our Fata Morgana was more real to me than that old life.