CHAPTER THE SECOND
THE BEGINNING OF THE DREAM

1

"This dream of mine began," he said,"as all our lives begin, in fragments, in a number of disconnected impressions. I remember myself lying on a sofa, a sofa covered with a curious sort of hard, shiny material with a red and black pattern on it, and I was screaming, but I do not know why I screamed. I discovered my father standing in the doorway of the room looking at me. He looked very dreadful; he was partially undressed in trousers and a flannel shirt and his fair hair was an unbrushed shock; he was shaving and his chin was covered with lather. He was angry because I was screaming. I suppose I stopped screaming, but I am not sure. And I remember kneeling upon the same hard red and black sofa beside my mother and looking out of the window the sofa used to stand with its back to the window-sill at the rain falling on the roadway outside. The window-sill smelt faintly of paint; soft bad paint that had blistered in the sun. It was a violent storm of rain and the road was an ill-made road of a yellowish sandy clay. It was covered with muddy water and the storming rainfall made a multitude of flashing bubbles, that drove along before the wind and burst and gave place to others.

"'Look at 'em, dearie,' said my mother. 'Like sojers.'

"I think I was still very young when that happened, ut I was not so young that I had not often
seen soldiers with their helmets and bayonets marching by."

"That," said Radiant,"was some time before the Great War, then, and the Social Collapse."

"Some time before," said Sarnac. He considered."Twenty-one years before. This house in which I was born was less than two miles from the great military camp of the British at Lowcliff in England, and Lowcliff railway station was only a few hundred yards away. 'Sojers' were the most conspicuous objects in my world outside my home. They were more brightly coloured than other people. My mother used to wheel me out for air every day in a thing called a perambulator, and whenever there were soldiers to be seen she used to say, 'Oh! PRITTY sojers!'

"'Sojers' must have been one of my earliest words. I used to point my little wool-encased finger for they wrapped up children tremendously in those days and I wore even gloves and I would say: 'Sosher.'

"Let me try and describe to you what s