The great city of London was once more her splendid self: mysterious as ever but bursting with new life.

In the tightly packed clusters of villages with the ancient names—Hackney, Holborn, Shoreditch, Putney, Paddington, Bow—new towers were rising into the yellow sky; the open spaces, if fewer, were neater; the old houses were painted; the monuments were clean.

Best news of all, the people were regrown. The same savagely cheerful race, fresh mixed with more new blood than ever in its history, jostled together in costumes inspired by every romantic fashion known to television. While round its knees in a luxuriant crop the educated children shot up like the towers, full of the future. Early one Thursday evening, late in the year at one particular moment, just before the rush hour, when the lights were coming up and the shadows deepening, five apparently unrelated incidents in five ordinary, normal lives were taking place at points set far apart within the wide boundaries of the town.