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"No," he answered. "But that is just what I did. I am a solicitor,
you must understand, in Liverpool, and I could not help wondering
what the clients and business people I found myself talking to in my
office would think if I told them suddenly I was in love with a girl
who would be born a couple of hundred years or so hence, and worried
about the politics of my great-great-great-grandchildren. I was
chiefly busy that day negotiating a ninety-nine-year building lease.
It was a private builder in a hurry, and we wanted to tie him in
every possible way. I had an interview with him, and he showed a
certain want of temper that sent me to bed still irritated. That
night I had no dream. Nor did I dream the next night, at least,
to remember.
"Something of that intense reality of conviction vanished. I
began to feel sure it was a dream. And then it came again.
"When the dream came again, nearly four days later, it was
very different. I think it certain that four days had also elapsed
in the dream. Many things had happened in the north, and the
shadow of them was back again between us, and this time it was not
so easily dispelled. I began I know with moody musings. Why, in
spite of all, should I go back, go back for all the rest of my days
to toil and stress, insults and perpetual dissatisfaction, simply
to save hundreds of millions of common people, whom I did not love,
whom too often I could do no other than despise, from the stress
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