“No, you do not understand. How can you, when even I cannot? Thus for two hundred and fifty thousand years I slept, and they went by as a lightning flash. One moment my father gave me the draught and I laid me down, the next I awoke with you bending over me, or so it seemed. Yet where was I through all those centuries when for me time had ceased? Tell me, Humphrey, did you dream at all while you were ill? I ask because down in that lonely cavern where I sleep a strange dream came to me one night. It was of a journey which, as I thought, you and I seemed to make together, past suns and universes to a very distant earth. It meant nothing, Humphrey. If you and I chanced to have dreamed the same thing, it was only because my dream travelled to you. It is most common, or used to be. Humphrey, Bickley is quite right, I am not altogether as your women are, and I can bring no happiness to any man, or at the least, to one who cannot wait. Therefore, perhaps you would do well to think less of me, as I have counselled Bastin and Bickley.”
Then again she gazed at me with her wonderful, great eyes, and, shaking her glittering head a little, smiled and went.
But oh! that smile drew my heart after her.
XX
Oro and Arbuthnot Travel by Night
As time went on, Oro began to visit me more and more frequently, till at last scarcely a night went by that he did not appear mysteriously in my sleeping-place. The odd thing was that neither Bickley nor Bastin seemed to be aware of these nocturnal calls. Indeed, when I mentioned them on one or two occasions, they stared at me and said it was strange that he should have come and gone as they saw nothing of him.
On my speaking again of the matter, Bickley at once turned the conversation, from which I gathered that he believed me to be suffering from delusions consequent on my illness, or perhaps to have taken to dreaming. This was not wonderful since, as I learned afterwards, Bickley, after he was sure that I was asleep, made a practice of tying a thread across my doorway and of ascertaining at the dawn that it remained unbroken. But Oro was not to be caught in that way. I suppose, as it was impossible for him to pass through the latticework of the open side of the house, that he undid the thread and fastened it again when he left; at least, that was Bastin’s explanation, or, rather, one of them. Another was that he crawled beneath it, but this I could not believe. I am quite certain that during all his prolonged existence Oro never crawled.
At any rate, he came, or seemed to come, and pumped me—I can use no other word—most energetically as to existing conditions in the world, especially those of the civilised countries, their methods of government, their social state, the physical characteristics of the various races, their religions, the exact degrees of civilisation that they had developed, their attainments in art, science and literature, their martial capacities, their laws, and I know not what besides.
I told him all I could, but did not in the least seem to satisfy his perennial thirst for information.
“I should prefer to judge for myself,” he said at last.
“Why are you so anxious to learn about all these nations, Oro?” I asked, exhausted.
“Because the knowledge I gather may affect my plans for the future,” he replied darkly.
“I am told, Oro, that your people acquired the power of transporting themselves from place to place.”
“It is true that the lords of the Sons of Wisdom had such power, and that I have it still, O Humphrey.”
“Then why do you not go to look with your own eyes?” I suggested.
“Because I should need a guide; one who could explain much in a short time,” he said, contemplating me with his burning glance until I began to feel uncomfortable.
To change the subject I asked him whether he had any further information about the war, which he had told me was raging in Europe.
He answered: “Not much; only that it was going on with varying success, and would continue to do so until the nations involved therein were exhausted,” or so he believed. The war did not seem greatly to interest Oro. It was, he remarked, but a small affair compared to those which he had known in the old days. Then he departed, and I went to sleep.
Next night he appeared again, and, after talking a little on different subjects, remarked quietly that he had been thinking over what I had said as to his visiting the modern world, and intended to act upon the suggestion.
“When?” I asked.
“Now,” he said. “I am going to visit this England of yours and the town you call London, and you will accompany me.”
“It is not possible!” I exclaimed. “We have no ship.”
“We can travel without a ship,” said Oro.
I grew alarmed, and suggested that Bastin or Bickley would be a much better companion than I should in my present weak state.
“An empty-headed man, or one who always doubts and argues, would be useless,” he replied sharply. “You shall come and you only.”
I expostulated; I tried to get up and fly—which, indeed, I did do, in another sense.
But Oro fixed his eyes upon me and slowly waved his thin hand to and fro above my head.
My senses reeled. Then came a great darkness.
They returned again. Now I was standing in an icy, reeking fog, which I knew could belong to one place only—London, in December, and at my side was Oro.
“Is this the climate of your wonderful city?” he asked, or seemed to ask, in an aggrieved tone.
I replied that it was, for about three
