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

imagination suddenly created dominated his mind with an intense attraction.
Then he flashed into anger.

"No I" he shouted.

He began striding rapidly up and down the room.

"Everything you say, everything you do, convinces me-of some great issue in
which I am concerned. I do not want to pass the time, as you call it. Yes,
I know. Desire and indulgence are life in a senseand Death! Extinction! In
my life before I slept I had worked out that pitiful question. I will not
begin again. There is a city, a multitude-. And meanwhile I am here like a
rabbit in a bag."

His rage surged high. He choked for a moment and began to wave his clenched
fists. He gave way to an anger fit, he swore archaic curses. His gestures
had the quality of physical threats.

"I do not know who your party may be. I am in the dark, and you keep me in
the dark. But I know this, that I am secluded here for no good purpose. For
no good purpose. I warn you, I warn you of the consequences. Once I come at
my power-"

He realised that to threaten thus might be a danger to himself. He stopped.
Howard stood regarding him with a curious expression.

"I take it this is a message to the Council," said Howard.

Graham had a momentary impulse to leap upon the man, fell or stun him. It
must have shown upon his face; at any rate Howard's movement was quick. In
a second the noiseless door had closed again, and the man from the
nineteenth century was alone.

For a moment he stood rigid, with clenched hands half raised. Then he flung
them down. "What a fool I have been!" he said, and gave way to his anger
again, stamping about the room and shouting curses. For a long time he kept
himself in a sort of frenzy, raging at his position, at his own folly, at
the knaves who had imprisoned him. He did this because he did not want to
look calmly at his position. He clung to his anger-because he was afraid of
Fear.

Presently he found himself reasoning with himself This imprisonment was
unaccountable, but no doubt the legal forms-new legal forms-of the time
permitted it. It must, of course, be legal. These people were two hundred
years further on in the march of civilisation than the Victorian
generation. It was not likely they would be less-humane. Yet they had
cleared their minds of formulae! Was humanity a formula as well as
chastity?

His imagination set to work to suggest things that might be done to him.