PHILOSOPHIC ANTS 199 



filling everything with a black demoniacal power 

 which brought only horror with it. 



If he could but accelerate the machine ! He 

 wanted to know — to know whether this phantom 

 were a reality, to know above all if it were a thing of 

 evil or of good : and he could not know unless he 

 could advance that last final step necessary to fuse 

 the rhythm of separate events into the sensation of 

 the single whole. 



He sat straining all his faculties : the machine 

 whirred and rocked : but in vain. And at last, 

 feeling desperately hungry, for he had forgotten to 

 take food with him, he gradually brought back the 

 lever to its neutral-point. 



Of course, Mr. Wells would have done it much 

 better than this. 



And then there would have to be an ending. 

 I think the newspaper man would take his oppor- 

 tunity to slink off into the laboratory and get on 

 the machine with the idea of making a scoop for 

 his paper j . . . and then he would put the lever 

 in too violently, and be thrown backwards. His 

 head hit the corner of a bench, and he remained 

 stunned ; but by evil chance, the handles of the machine 

 still made connection with his body after the fall. The 

 machine was making him adjust his rhythm to that 

 of light ; so that he was living at an appalling rate. 



