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

graceful manner. He seemed a man of five-and-forty perhaps. For a moment he
did not perceive this was himself.

A flash of laughter came with the recognition. "To call on old Warming like
this!" he exclaimed, "and make him take me out to lunch! "

Then he thought of meeting first one and then another of the few familiar
acquaintances of his early manhood, and in the midst of his amusement
realised that every soul with whom he might jest had died many score of
years ago. The thought smote him abruptly and keenly; he stopped short, the
expression of his face changed to a white consternation.

The tumultuous memory of the moving platforms and the huge facade of that
wonderful street reasserted itself. The shouting multitudes came back clear
and vivid, and those remote, inaudible, unfriendly councilors in white. He
felt himself a little figure, very small and ineffectual, pitifully
conspicuous. And all about him, the world was-strange.

CHAPTER VII

IN THE SILENT ROOMS

Presently Graham resumed his examination of his apartments. Curiosity kept
him moving in spite of his fatigue. The inner room, he perceived, was high,
and its ceiling dome shaped', with an oblong aperture in the centre,
opening into a funnel in which a wheel of broad vans seemed to be rotating,
apparently driving the air up the shaft. The faint humming note of its easy
motion was the only clear sound in that quiet place. As these vans sprang
up one after the other, Graham could get transient glimpses of the sky. He
was surprised to see a star.

This drew his attention to the fact that the bright lighting of these rooms
was due to a multitude of very faint glow lamps set about the cornices.
There were no windows. And he began to recall that along all the vast
chambers and passages he had traversed with Howard he had observed no
windows at all. Had there been windows? There were windows on the street
indeed, but were they for light? Or was the whole city lit day and night
for evermore, so that there was no night there?

And another thing dawned upon him. There was no fireplace in either room.
Was the season summer, and were these merely summer apartments, or was the
whole City uniformly heated or cooled? He became interested in these
questions, began examining the smooth texture of the walls, the simply
constructed bed, the ingenious arrangements by which the labour of bedroom
service was practically abolished. And over everything was a curious
absence of deliberate ornament, a bare grace of form and colour, that he
found very pleasing to the eye. There were several very comfortable chairs,
a light table on silent runners carrying several bottles of fluids and
glasses, and two plates bearing a clear substance like jelly. Then he
noticed there were no books, no newspapers, no writing materials. "The