thoughts were busy with the same memory. Her shoulders were shaken by dry sobs. A pure attack of nerves. When it quieted down she murmured drearily, “What will they do to him?”

‘ “Nothing. They can do nothing to him,” I assured her, with perfect truth. I was pretty certain he had died in less than twenty minutes from the moment his hand had gone to his lips. For if his fanatical anti-anarchism went even as far as carrying poison in his pocket, only to rob his adversaries of their legitimate vengeance, I knew he would take care to provide something that would not fail him when required.

‘She sighed deeply. There were red spots on her cheeks and a feverish brilliance in her eyes while she exhaled her characteristic plaint.

‘ “What an awful, terrible experience, to be so basely, so abominably, so cruelly deceived by a man to whom one has given one’s whole confidence!” She gulped down a pathetic sob. “If I ever felt sure of anything, it was of Sevrin’s highmindedness.”

‘Then she began to weep quietly, which was good for her. Then through her flood of tears, half resentful, “What was it he said to me?—‘From conviction!’ It seemed worse than anything. What could he mean by it?”

‘ “That, my dear young lady,” I said gently, “is more than I or anybody else can explain to you.” ’

Mr X flicked a crumb off the front of his coat.

‘And that was strictly true as to her. Though Horne, for instance, understood very well; and so did I, especially after we had been to Sevrin’s lodging in a dismal back street of an intensely respectable quarter. Horne was known there as a friend, and we had no difficulty in being admitted, the slatternly girl merely remarking, as she let us in, that “Mr Sevrin had not been home that night.” We forced a couple of drawers in the way of duty, and found a little useful information. The most interesting part was his diary; for this man, engaged in such deadly work, had the weakness to keep a record of the most damnatory kind. There were his acts and also his thoughts laid bare to us. But the dead don’t mind that. They don’t mind anything.

‘ “From conviction.” Yes. The vague but ardent humanitarianism which had urged him in his first youth to embrace the extreme revolutionary doctrines had ended in a sudden revulsion of feeling. You have heard of converted atheists. These turn often into dangerous fanatics. But the soul remains the same, after all. After he had got acquainted with the girl, there are to be met in that diary of his, mingled with amorous rhapsodies, bizarre, piously worded aspirations for her conversion. He took her sovereign grimace with deadly seriousness. But all this cannot interest you. For the rest, I don’t know if you remember—it is a good many years ago now—the journalistic sensation of the “Hermione Street Mystery”; the finding of a man’s body in the cellar of an empty house; the inquest; some arrests; many surmises—then silence—the usual end for many obscure martyrs and confessors. The fact is, he was not enough of an optimist. You must be a savage, determined, pitiless, thick-and-thin optimist, like Horne, for instance, to make a good revolutionist of the extreme type.’

He rose from the table. A waiter hurried up with his overcoat; another held his hat in readiness.

‘But what became of the young lady?’ I asked.

‘I happen to know,’ he said, buttoning himself up carefully. ‘I confess to the small malice of sending her Sevrin’s diary. She went into retirement; then she went to Rome; then she went into a convent. I don’t know where she will go next. What does it matter? Gestures! Gestures! Mere gestures of her class.’

He fitted on his glossy high hat with extreme precision, and casting a slight glance round the room, full of well-dressed people, innocently dining, muttered between his teeth,