I did so, I suppose I must have talked for an hour on end. Throughout that time neither she nor Sarakoff stirred. When I had finished there was a long silence.
"It is funny to think of our last meeting, Richard," she said at length. "Do you remember how my father behaved? He is different now. He sits all day in his study—he eats very little. He seems to be in a dream."
"And you?" I asked.
"I am in a dream, too. I do not understand it. All the things I used to busy myself with seem unimportant."
"That is how we feel," said Sarakoff. He rose to his feet and spoke strongly. "Harden, as Miss Annot says, everything has changed. I never foresaw this; I do not understand it myself."
He went slowly to the mantelpiece and leaned against it.
"When I created this germ, I saw in my mind an ideal picture of life. I saw a world freed from a dire spectre, a world from which fear had been removed, the fear of death. I saw the great triumph of materialism and the final smashing up of all superstition. A man would live in a state of absolute certainty. He would lay his plans for pleasure and comfort and enjoyment with absolute precision, knowing—not hoping—but certainly knowing, that they would come about. I saw cities and gardens built in triumph to cater for the gratification of every sense. I saw new laws in operation, constructed by men who knew that they had mastered the secret of life and had nothing to fear. I saw all those things about which we are so timid and vague—marriage and divorce, the education of children, luxury, the working classes, religion and so on—absolutely settled in black and white. I saw what I thought to be the millennium."
"And now?" asked Alice.
"Now I see nothing. I am in the dark. I do not understand what has happened to me."
"What we are in for now, no man can say," I remarked.