struck solemn and waited in silence for Challenger to continue.
His overpowering presence and appearance lent such force to the
solemnity of his words that for a moment all the crudities and
absurdities of the man vanished, and he loomed before us as
something majestic and beyond the range of ordinary humanity.
Then to me, at least, there came back the cheering recollection
of how twice since we had entered the room he had roared with
laughter. Surely, I thought, there are limits to mental
detachment. The crisis cannot be so great or so pressing after
all.

"You will conceive a bunch of grapes," said he, "which are
covered by some infinitesimal but noxious bacillus. The gardener
passes it through a disinfecting medium. It may be that he
desires his grapes to be cleaner. It may be that he needs space
to breed some fresh bacillus less noxious than the last. He dips
it into the poison and they are gone. Our Gardener is, in my
opinion, about to dip the solar system, and the human bacillus,
the little mortal vibrio which twisted and wriggled upon the
outer rind of the earth, will in an instant be sterilized out of
existence."

Again there was silence. It was broken by the high trill of the
telephone-bell.

"There is one of our bacilli squeaking for help," said he with
a grim smile. "They are beginning to realize that their
continued existence is not really one of the necessities of
the universe."