The man in green bowed, and, advancing, seated himself by Graham on the bed.  His manner was calm, but his eyes were full of curiosity.  “You will find the fashions altered, Sire,” he said.  He glanced from under his brows at the thickset man.

He opened the roller with a quick movement, and a confusion of brilliant fabrics poured out over his knees.  “You lived, Sire, in a period essentially cylindrical—­the Victorian.  With a tendency to the hemisphere in hats.  Circular curves always.  Now—­” He flicked out a little appliance the size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled the knob, and behold—­a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope fashion on the dial, walking and turning.  The tailor caught up a pattern of bluish white satin.  “That is my conception of your immediate treatment,” he said.

The thickset man came and stood by the shoulder of Graham.

“We have very little time,” he said.

“Trust me,” said the tailor.  “My machine follows.  What do you think of this?”

“What is that?” asked the man from the nineteenth century.

“In your days they showed you a fashion-plate,” said the tailor, “but this is our modern development.  See here.”  The little figure repeated its evolutions, but in a different costume.  “Or this,” and with a click another small figure in a more voluminous type of robe marched on to the dial.  The tailor was very quick in his movements, and glanced twice towards the lift as he did these things.

It rumbled again, and a crop-haired anemic lad with features of the Chinese type, clad in coarse pale blue canvas, appeared together with a complicated machine, which he pushed noiselessly on little castors into the room.  Incontinently the little kinetoscope was dropped, Graham was invited to stand in front of the machine and the tailor muttered some instructions to the crop-haired lad, who answered in guttural tones and with words Graham did not recognise.  The boy then went to conduct an incomprehensible monologue in the corner, and the tailor pulled out a number of slotted arms terminating in little discs, pulling them out until the discs were flat against the body of Graham, one at each shoulder blade, one at the elbows, one at the neck and so forth, so that at last there were, perhaps, two score of them upon his body and limbs.  At the same time, some other person entered the room by the lift, behind Graham.  The tailor set moving a mechanism that initiated a faint-sounding rhythmic movement of parts in the machine, and in another moment he was knocking up the levers and Graham was released.  The tailor replaced his cloak of black, and the man with the flaxen beard proffered him a little glass of some refreshing fluid.  Graham saw over the rim of the glass a pale-faced young man regarding him with a singular fixity.