In one of my long, dreary, companionless walks, unshared by any human fellowship, I saw at last a face which I remembered; it was that of the cynical spectator who had spoken to me in the noisy street, in the midst of my early experiences.  He gave a glance round him to see that there were no officials in sight, then left the file in which he was walking, and joined me.  ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘you are here already,’ with the same derisive smile with which he had before regarded me.  I hated the man and his sneer, yet that he should speak to me was something, almost a pleasure.

‘Yes,’ said I, ‘I am here.’  Then, after a pause, in which I did not know what to say, ‘It is quiet here,’ I said.

’Quiet enough.  Do you like it better for that?  To do whatever you please with no one to interfere; or to do nothing you please, but as you are forced to do it,—­which do you think is best?’

I felt myself instinctively glance round, as he had done, to make sure that no one was in sight.  Then I answered, faltering, ’I have always held that law and order were necessary things; and the lawlessness of that—­that place—­I don’t know its name—­if there is such a place,’ I cried, ‘I thought it was a dream.’

He laughed in his mocking way.  ‘Perhaps it is all a dream; who knows?’ he said.

‘Sir,’ said I, ‘you have been longer here than I—­’

‘Oh,’ cried he, with a laugh that was dry and jarred upon the air almost like a shriek, ‘since before your forefathers were born!’ It seemed to me that he spoke like one who, out of bitterness and despite, made every darkness blacker still.  A kind of madman in his way; for what was this claim of age?—­a piece of bravado, no doubt, like the rest.

‘That is strange,’ I said, assenting, as when there is such a hallucination it is best to do.  ’You can tell me, then, whence all this authority comes, and why we are obliged to obey.’

He looked at me as if he were thinking in his mind how to hurt me most.  Then, with that dry laugh, ‘We make trial of all things in this world,’ he said, ’to see if perhaps we can find something we shall like.—­discipline here, freedom in the other place.  When you have gone all the round like me, then perhaps you will be able to choose.’

‘Have you chosen?’ I asked.

He only answered with a laugh.  ‘Come,’ he said, ’there is amusement to be had too, and that of the most elevated kind.  We make researches here into the moral nature of man.  Will you come?  But you must take the risk,’ he added with a smile which afterwards I understood.

We went on together after this till we reached the centre of the place, in which stood an immense building with a dome, which dominated the city, and into a great hall in the centre of that, where a crowd of people were assembled.  The sound of human speech, which murmured all around, brought new life to my heart.  And as I gazed at a curious apparatus erected on a platform, several people spoke to me.