A MODERN UTOPIA
"I mean it! We come from an inferior world! Like this, but out of order."
"No world could be more out of order———"
"You play at that and have your fun. But there's no limit to the extent to which a world of men may get out of gear. In our world———"
He nodded, but his eye had ceased to be friendly.
"Men die of starvation; people die by the hundred thousand needlessly and painfully; men and women are lashed together to make hell for each other; children are born—abominably, and reared in cruelty and folly; there is a thing called war, a horror of blood and vileness. The whole thing seems to me at times a cruel and wasteful wilderness of muddle. You in this decent world have no means of understanding———"
"No?" he said, and would have begun, but I went on too quickly.
"No! When I see you dandering through this excellent and hopeful world, objecting, obstructing, and breaking the law, displaying your wit on science and order, on the men who toil so ingloriously to swell and use the knowledge that is salvation, this salvation for which our poor world cries to heaven———"
"You don't mean to say," he said, "that you really come from some other world where things are different and worse?"
"I do."
"And you want to talk to me about it instead of listening to me?"
"Yes."
"Oh, nonsense!" he said abruptly. "You can't do
118
