And the end had been a tragedy that oppressed him.

He sat staring at the blankness.
He started and rubbed his eyes.

He had been so absorbed in the latter-day substitute for a novel, that he awoke to the little green and white room with more than a touch of the surprise of his first awakening.
He stood up, and abruptly he was back in his own wonderland.

The clearness of the kinetoscope drama passed, and the struggle in the vast place of streets, the ambiguous Council, the swift phases of his waking hour, came back.

These people had spoken of the Council with suggestions of a vague universality of power.