Review of Reviews^ 1J9/0S. 



IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET. 



BY H. G. WELLS. 

 BOOK THE FIRST— THE COMET. 



CHAPTER THE SECOND— NETTIE— iConfinued). 



STiS'OPSIS: The narrator tells the story of the Great Change. When a young man he was a clerk in a pot- 

 bank in Claj-ton. He is refused an increase in wages ami gives up his position. His intimate friend ia a socialist, 

 Parloa4, a man of his own age, who has, besides, a taste for science and is deeply concerned about a comet whose 

 path is approaching the earth's orbit. Why continue to think about socialism, he argues, when there is a pos- 

 sibility that the comet will hit tlie earth? Times are bad in England, on account of overproduction and the in- 

 trusion of American products in the English market. Strikes and lockouts exist throughout the country. The 

 narrator has been engaged to marry Nettie Stuart, but the engagement has been broken on account of his socialism 

 and religious doubt. However, he longs to see the girl again, and one Sunday afternoon arrives at her home in 

 Oheckshill. 



IV. 



When Nettie and I had been sixteen, we had 

 been just of aji age and contemporaries altogether. 

 Now we were a year and three-quarters older, and 

 she — her metamorphosis was almost complete, and 

 I was still only at the beginning of a man's long 

 adolescence. 



In an instant she grasped the situation. The 

 hidden motives of her quick-ripened little mind 

 flashed out their intuitive scheme of action. She 

 treated me with that neat perfection of understand- 

 ing a young woman has for a boy. 



" But how did you come ?" she asked. 



I told her I had walked. 



" Walked !" In an instant she was leading me 

 towjird the gardens. I must be tired. I must come 

 home with her at once and sit down. Indeed, it 

 was near tea-time (the Stuarts had tea at the old- 

 fashioned hour of live). Everyone would be so sur- 

 prised to see me. Fancy walking ! Fancy ! But 

 she supposed a man thought nothing of seventeen 

 miles. When could I have started ! 



And all the while, by imperceptible manoeuvres, 

 keeping me at a distance, w-ithout even the touch of 

 her hand. 



■' But, Nettie 1 I came over to talk to you !" 



" My dear boy ! Tea first, if you please ! And 

 besides — aren't we talking?" 



The " dear boy " was a new note, a dissonance, 

 that sounded oddly to me. 



She quickened her pace a little. 



■' I wanted to explain " I began. 



Whatever I wanted to explain, I had no chance to 

 do so. I said a few discrepant things, that she an- 

 swered rather by her intonation than her words. 



When we were well past the shrubbery, she 

 slackened a little in her urgency, and so we came 

 along the slope under the beeches to the gardens. 

 She kept her bright, straightforward-looking girlish 

 eyes on me as we went ; it seemed she did so all 

 the time, but now- I know, better than I did then, 

 that every now and then she glanced over me and 

 behind me towards the shrubbery. And all the 

 while, behind her quick, breathless, inconsecutive 

 talk, she was thinking. 



