rage, the fashion—the thing to read with wonder and horror, to turn your eyes up at my pathos … or else to laugh in ecstasies at my wit.’

‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘I remember, of course; and I confess frankly that I could never understand that infatuation.’

‘Don’t you know yet,’ he said, ‘that an idle and selfish class loves to see mischief being made, even if it is made at its own expense? Its own life being all a matter of vestment and gesture, it is unable to realize the power and the danger of real ache and of words that have no sham meaning. It is all fun and sentiment. It is sufficient, for instance, to point out the attitude of the old French aristocracy towards the philosophers whose words were preparing the Great Revolution. Even in England, where you have some common sense, a demagogue has only to shout loud enough and long enough to find some backing in the very class he is shouting at. You too like to see mischief being made. The demagogue gets the amateurs of emotion with him. Amateurism in this, that, and the other thing is a delightfully easy way of killing time, and of feeding one’s own vanity—the silly vanity of being abreast with the ideas of the day after to-morrow. Just as good and otherwise harmless people will join you in ecstasies over your collection without having the slightest notion in what its marvellousness really consists.’

I hung my head. It was a crushing illustration of the sad truth he advanced. The world is full of such people. And that instance of the French aristocracy before the Revolution was extremely telling, too. I could not traverse his statement, though its cynicism—always a distasteful trait—took off much of its value, to my mind. However, I admit I was impressed. I felt the need to say something which would not be in the nature of assent and yet would not invite discussion.

‘You don’t mean to say,’ I observed, airily, ‘that extreme revolutionists have ever been actively assisted by the infatuation of such people?’

‘I did not mean exactly that by what I said just now. I generalized. But since you ask me, I may tell you that such help has been given to revolutionary activities, more or less consciously, in various countries. And even in this country.’

‘Impossible!’ I protested with firmness. ‘We don’t play with fire to that extent.’

‘And yet you can better afford it than others, perhaps. But let me observe that most women, if not always ready to play with fire, are generally eager to play with a loose spark or so.’

‘Is that a joke?’ I asked, smiling.

‘If it is, I am not aware of it,’ he said, woodenly. ‘I was thinking of an instance. Oh! mild enough in a way.…’

I became all expectation at this. I had tried many times to approach him on his underground side, so to speak. The very word had been pronounced between us. But he had always met me with his impenetrable calm.

‘And at the same time,’ Mr X continued, ‘it will give you a notion of the difficulties that may arise in what you are pleased to call underground work. It is sometimes difficult to deal with them. Of course there is no hierarchy amongst the affiliated. No rigid system.’

My surprise was great, but short-lived. Of course amongst the extreme anarchists there could be no hierarchy; nothing in the nature of a law of precedence. The idea of anarchy ruling among anarchists was comforting, too. It could not possibly make for efficiency.

Mr X startled me by asking, abruptly, ‘You know Hermione Street?’