“How unreal my life seems to be growing,” he thought. “London seemed fantastic to me when I lived there, like a tissue of filmy threads; but⁠ ⁠… good Lord!⁠ ⁠… compared with this!⁠—It would be curious if that old woman reading that book were really reading my history and has now perhaps come to my death. Well, as long as old women like that read books by candlelight there’ll be some romance left!”

His mind withdrew into itself with a jerk at this point, trying to push away a certain image of things that rose discomfortably upon him⁠—the image of a countryside covered from sea to sea by illuminated stations for airships, overspread from sea to sea by thousands of humming aeroplanes!

What would ever become of Tilly-Valley’s religion in that world, with headlights flashing along cemented highways, and all existence dominated by electricity. What would become of old women reading by candlelight? What would become of his own life-illusion, his secret “mythology,” in such a world?