The Bubble Bursts

Section 1.

As I walk back along the river terrace to the hotel where the
botanist awaits me, and observe the Utopians I encounter, I have no
thought that my tenure of Utopia becomes every moment more
precarious. There float in my mind vague anticipations of more talks
with my double and still more, of a steady elaboration of detail, of
interesting journeys of exploration. I forget that a Utopia is a
thing of the imagination that becomes more fragile with every added
circumstance, that, like a soap-bubble, it is most brilliantly and
variously coloured at the very instant of its dissolution. This
Utopia is nearly done. All the broad lines of its social
organisation are completed now, the discussion of all its general
difficulties and problems. Utopian individuals pass me by, fine
buildings tower on either hand; it does not occur to me that I may
look too closely. To find the people assuming the concrete and
individual, is not, as I fondly imagine, the last triumph of
realisation, but the swimming moment of opacity before the film
gives way. To come to individual emotional cases, is to return to
the earth.

I find the botanist sitting at a table in the hotel courtyard.

"Well?" I say, standing before him.

"I've been in the gardens on the river terrace," he answers, "hoping
I might see her again."

"Nothing better to do?"

"Nothing in the world."

"You'll have your double back from India to-morrow. Then you'll have
conversation."

"I don't want it," he replies, compactly.

I shrug my shoulders, and he adds, "At least with him."

I let myself down into a seat beside him.

For a time I sit restfully enjoying his companionable silence, and
thinking fragmentarily of those samurai and their Rules. I entertain
something of the satisfaction of a man who has finished building a
bridge; I feel that I have joined together things that I had never
joined before. My Utopia seems real to me, very real, I can believe
in it, until the metal chair-back gives to my shoulder blades, and
Utopian sparrows twitter and hop before my feet. I have a pleasant
moment of unhesitating self-satisfaction; I feel a shameless
exultation to be there. For a moment I forget the consideration the
botanist demands; the mere pleasure of completeness, of holding and
controlling all the threads possesses me.

"You _will_ persist in believing," I say, with an aggressive
expository note, "that if you meet this lady she will be a person
with the memories and sentiments of her double on earth. You think
she will understand and pity, and perhaps love you. Nothing of the
sort is the