"Herbert George Wells. When the Sleeper Wakes" - читать интересную книгу автора

importance. What was that shouting I heard? Why is a great multitude
shouting and excited because my trance is over, and who are the men in
white in that huge council chamber? "

"All in good time, Sire," said Howard. "But not crudely, not crudely. This
is one of those flimsy times when no man has a settled mind. Your
awakening. No one expected your awakening. The Council is consulting."

"What council? "

"The Council you saw."

Graham made a petulant movement. " This is not right," he said. " I should
be told what is happening.

"You must wait. Really you must wait."

Graham sat down abruptly. "I suppose since I have waited so long to resume
life," he said, "that I must wait a little longer."

"That is better," said Howard. "Yes, that is much better. And I must leave
you alone. For a space. While I attend the discussion in the Council. I am
sorry."

He went towards the noiseless door, hesitated and vanished.

Graham walked to the door, tried it, found it securely fastened in some way
he never came to understand, turned about, paced the room restlessly, made
the circuit of the room, and sat down. He remained sitting for some time
with folded arms and knitted brow, biting his finger nails and trying to
piece together the kaleidoscopic impressions of this first hour of awakened
life; the vast mechanical spaces, the endless series of chambers and
passages, the great struggle that roared and splashed through these strange
ways, the little group of remote unsympathetic men beneath the colossal
Atlas, Howard's mysterious behaviour. There was an inkling of some vast
inheritance already in his mind-a vast inheritance perhaps misapplied-of
some unprecedented importance and opportunity. What had he to do? And this
room's secluded silence was eloquent of imprisonment!

It came into Graham's mind with irresistible conviction that this series of
magnificent impressions was a dream. He tried to shut his eyes and
succeeded, but that time-honoured device led to no awakening.

Presently he began to touch and examine all the unfamiliar appointments of
the two small rooms in which he found himself.

In a long oval panel of mirror he saw himself and stopped astonished. He
was clad in a graceful costume of purple and bluish white, with a little
greyshot beard trimmed to a point, and his hair, its blackness streaked now
with bands of grey, arranged over his forehead in an unfamiliar but