He was gone from the room for a minute or two. I remember that
none of us spoke in his absence. The situation seemed beyond all
words or comments.

"The medical officer of health for Brighton," said he when he
returned. "The symptoms are for some reason developing more
rapidly upon the sea level. Our seven hundred feet of elevation
give us an advantage. Folk seem to have learned that I am the
first authority upon the question. No doubt it comes from my
letter in the Times. That was the mayor of a provincial town
with whom I talked when we first arrived. You may have heard me
upon the telephone. He seemed to put an entirely inflated value
upon his own life. I helped him to readjust his ideas."

Summerlee had risen and was standing by the window. His thin,
bony hands were trembling with his emotion.

"Challenger," said he earnestly, "this thing is too serious for
mere futile argument. Do not suppose that I desire to irritate
you by any question I may ask. But I put it to you whether there
may not be some fallacy in your information or in your
reasoning. There is the sun shining as brightly as ever in the
blue sky. There are the heather and the flowers and the birds.
There are the folk enjoying themselves upon the golf-links and
the laborers yonder cutting the corn. You tell us that they and
we may be upon the very brink of destruction--that this sunlit
day may be that day of doom which the human race has so long
awaited. So far as we know, you found this tremendous judgment
upon what? Upon some abnormal lines in a spectrum--upon rumours
from Sumatra--upon some curious personal excitement which we have