were made to understand each other. Does this surprise you? I suppose you think that such people are given to foaming at the mouth and snarling at each other?’

I protested hastily that I was not surprised in the least; that I thought nothing of the kind; that anarchists in general were simply inconceivable to me mentally, morally, logically, sentimentally, and even physically. X received this declaration with his usual woodenness and went on.

‘Horne had burst out into eloquence. While pouring out scornful invective, he let tears escape from his eyes. They fell down his black beard unheeded. Sevrin panted quicker and quicker. When he opened his mouth to speak, every one hung on his words.

‘ “Don’t be a fool, Horne,” he began. “You know very well that I have done this for none of the reasons you are throwing at me.” And in a moment he became outwardly as steady as a rock under the other’s livid stare. “I have been thwarting, deceiving and betraying you—from conviction.”

‘He turned his back on Horne, and, looking intently at the girl, repeated the words, “From conviction.”

‘It’s extraordinary how cold she looked. I suppose she could not think of an appropriate gesture. There can have been few precedents indeed for such a situation.

‘ “Clear as daylight,” he added. “Do you understand? From conviction.”

‘And still she did not stir. She did not know how to respond. But the luckless wretch was about to give her the opportunity for a beautiful and correct gesture.

‘ “And I had in me the power to make you share it,” he protested, ardently. He had forgotten himself. He made a step towards her. Perhaps he stumbled. To me he seemed only to be stooping low before her with an extended hand. And then the appropriate gesture came. She snatched her skirt away from his polluting touch and turned her head from him with an upward tilt. It was magnificently done, this gesture of conventionally unstained honour, of an unblemished highminded amateur.

‘Nothing could have been better. And he seemed to think so, too, for once more he turned away. But this time he faced no one. He was again panting frightfully, while he fumbled hurriedly in his waistcoat pocket, and then raised his hand to his lips. There was something furtive in this movement, but directly his bearing changed visibly. His laboured breathing gave him a resemblance to a man who had just run a desperate race; a curious air of detachment, of sudden and profound indifference, replaced the strain of the striving effort. I did not want to see what would happen next. I was only too well aware. I tucked the young lady’s arm under mine without a word, and made my way with her to the stairs.

‘Her brother walked behind us. Half-way up she seemed unable to lift her feet high enough, and we had to pull and push to get her to the top. In the passage she dragged herself along, hanging on my arm, helplessly bent like an impotent old woman. We issued into an empty street through a halfopen door, staggering like besotted revellers. At the corner we stopped a four-wheeler, and the ancient driver looked round from his box with morose contempt at our efforts to get her in. Twice during the drive I felt her collapse on my shoulder in a half faint. Facing us, the youth in knickerbockers remained as mute as a fish, and, till he jumped out with the latchkey, more still than I would have believed it possible.

‘At the door of their drawing-room she left my arm and walked in first, catching at the chairs and tables. She unpinned her hat, then, as if exhausted with the effort, her cloak still hanging from her shoulders; she flung herself into the deep arm-chair, sideways, her face half buried in a cushion. The good brother appeared silently with a glass of water. She motioned it away. He drank it himself and walked to a distant corner of the room—behind the grand piano, somewhere. All was still in this room where I had seen, for the first time, Sevrin, the anti-anarchist, captivated and spellbound by the consummate and hereditary grimaces that in a certain sphere of life take the place of feelings with an excellent effect. I suppose her