John Mudbury was on his way home from the shops, his arms full of Christmas presents. It was after six o’clock and the streets were very crowded. He was an ordinary man, lived in an ordinary suburban flat, with an ordinary wife and four ordinary children. He did not think them ordinary, but everybody else did. He had ordinary presents for each one, a cheap blotter for his wife, a cheap airgun for the eldest boy, and so forth. He was over fifty, bald, in an office, decent in mind and habits, of uncertain opinions, uncertain politics, and uncertain religion. Yet he considered himself a decided, positive gentleman, quite unaware that the morning newspaper determined his opinions for the day. He just lived⁠—from day to day. Physically, he was fit enough, except for a weak heart (which never troubled him); and his summer holiday was bad golf, while the children bathed and his wife read “Garvice” on the sands. Like the majority of men, he dreamed idly of the past, muddled away the present, and guessed vaguely⁠—after imaginative reading on occasions⁠—at the future. “I’d like to survive all right,” he said, “provided it’s better than this,” surveying his wife and children, and thinking of his daily toil. “Otherwise⁠—!” and he shrugged his shoulders as a brave man should. He went to church regularly. But nothing in church convinced him that he did survive, just as nothing in church enticed him into hoping that he would. On the other hand, nothing in life persuaded him that he didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t. “I’m an Evolutionist,” he loved to say to thoughtful cronies (over a glass), having never heard that Darwinism had been questioned.⁠ ⁠… And so he came home gaily, happily, with his bunch of Christmas presents “for the wife and little ones,” stroking himself upon their keen enjoyment and excitement. The night before he had taken “the wife” to see Magic at a select London theatre where the Intellectuals went⁠—and had been extraordinarily stirred. He had gone questioningly, yet expecting something out of the common. “It’s not musical,” he warned her, “nor farce, nor comedy, so to speak”; and in answer to her question as to what the Critics had said, he had wriggled, sighed, and put his gaudy necktie straight four times in quick succession. For no “Man in the Street,” with any claim to self-respect, could be expected to understand what the Critics had said, even if he understood the Play. And John had answered truthfully: “Oh, they just said things. But the theatre’s always full⁠—and that’s the only test.” And just now, as he crossed the crowded Circus to catch his bus, it chanced that his mind (having glimpsed an advertisement) was full of this particular Play, or, rather, of the effect it had produced upon him at the time. For it had thrilled him⁠—inexplicably: with its marvellous speculative hint, its big audacity, its alert and spiritual beauty.⁠ ⁠… Thought plunged to find something⁠—plunged after this bizarre suggestion of a bigger universe, after this quasi-jocular suggestion that man is not the only⁠—then dashed full-tilt against a sentence that memory thrust beneath his nose: “Science does not exhaust the Universe”⁠—and at the same time dashed full-tilt against destruction of another kind as well⁠ ⁠… ! How it happened, he never exactly knew. He saw a Monster glaring at him with eyes of blazing fire. It was horrible! It rushed upon him. He dodged.⁠ ⁠… Another Monster met him round the corner. Both came at him simultaneously.⁠ ⁠… He dodged again⁠—a leap that might have cleared a hurdle easily, but was too late. Between the pair of them⁠—his heart literally in his gullet⁠—he was mercilessly caught.⁠ ⁠… Bones crunched.⁠ ⁠… There was a soft sensation, icy cold and hot as fire. Horns and voices roared. Battering-rams he saw, and a carapace of iron.⁠ ⁠… Then dazzling light.⁠ ⁠… “Always face the traffic!” he remembered with a frantic yell⁠—and, by some extraordinary luck, escaped miraculously onto the opposite pavement.⁠ ⁠… There was no doubt about it. By the skin of his teeth he had dodged a rather ugly death. First⁠ ⁠… he felt for his presents⁠—all were safe. And then, instead of congratulating himself and taking breath, he hurried homewards⁠—on foot, which proved that his mind had lost control a bit!⁠—thinking only how disappointed the wife and children would have been if⁠—if anything had happened.⁠ ⁠… Another thing he realised, oddly enough, was that he no longer really loved his wife, but had only great affection for her. What made him think of that, Heaven only knows, but he did think of it. He was an honest man without pretence. This came as a discovery somehow.