But he was hurried on before he could form
a clear idea of the gathering. He judged they knew Howard and not
himself, and that they wondered who he was. This Howard, it seemed, was
a person of importance. But then he was also merely Graham's guardian.
That was odd.
There came a passage in twilight, and into this passage a footway hung so
that he could see the feet and ankles of people going to and fro thereon,
but no more of them. Then vague impressions of galleries and of casual
astonished passers-by turning round to stare after the two of them with
their red-clad guard.
The stimulus of the restoratives he had taken was only temporary. He was
speedily fatigued by this excessive haste. He asked Howard to slacken his
speed. Presently he was in a lift that had a window upon the great street
space, but this was glazed and did not open, and they were too high for
him to see the moving platforms below. But he saw people going to and fro
along cables and along strange, frail-looking bridges.
Thence they passed across the street and at a vast height above it. They
crossed by means of a narrow bridge closed in with glass, so clear that
it made him giddy even to remember it. The floor of it also was of glass.
From his memory of the cliffs between New Quay and Boscastle, so remote
in time, and so recent in his experience, it seemed to him that they
must be near four hundred feet above the moving ways. He stopped, looked
down between his legs upon the swarming blue and red multitudes, minute
and foreshortened, struggling and gesticulating still towards the little
balcony far below, a little toy balcony, it seemed, where he had so
recently been standing.
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