With a slight turn of the head the glitter of the spectacles seemed to gauge the size of the beer saloon in the basement of the renowned Silenus Restaurant.

`Nobody in this room could hope to escape,' was the verdict of that survey. `Nor yet this couple going up the stairs now.'

The piano at the foot of the staircase clanged through a mazurka with brazen impetuosity, as though a vulgar and impudent ghost were showing off. The keys sank and rose mysteriously. Then all became still. For a moment Ossipon imagined the over-lighted place changed into a dreadful black hole belching horrible fumes, choked with ghastly rubbish of smashed brickwork and mutilated corpses. He had such a distinct perception of ruin and death that he shuddered again. The other observed, with an air of calm sufficiency:

`In the last instance it is character alone that makes for one's safety. There are very few people in the world whose character is as well established as mine.'

`I wonder how you managed it,' growled Ossipon.

`Force of personality,' said the other, without raising his voice; and coming from the mouth of that obviously miserable organism the assertion caused the robust Ossipon to bite his lower lip. `Force of personality,' he repeated, with ostentatious calm.

`I have the means to make myself deadly, but that by itself, you understand, is absolutely nothing in the way of protection. What is effective is the belief those people have in my will to use the means. That's their impression. It is absolute. Therefore I am deadly.'

`There are individuals of character amongst that lot, too,' muttered Ossipon ominously.

`Possibly. But it is a matter of degree obviously, since, for instance, I am not impressed by them. Therefore they are inferior. They cannot be otherwise. Their character is built upon conventional morality. It leans on the social order. Mine stands free from everything artificial. They are bound in all sorts of conventions. They depend on life, which, in this connection, is a historical fact surrounded by all sorts of restraints and considerations, a complex, organized fact open to attack at every point; whereas I depend on death, which knows no restraint and cannot be attacked. My superiority is evident.'

`This is a transcendental way of putting it,' said Ossipon, watching the cold glitter of the round spectacles. `I've heard Karl Yundt say much the same thing not very long ago.'

`Karl Yundt,' mumbled the other, contemptuously, `the delegate of the International Red Committee, has been a posturing shadow all his life. There are three of you delegates, aren't there? I won't define the other two, as you are one of them. But what you say means nothing. You are the worthy delegates for revolutionary propaganda, but the trouble is not only that you are as unable to think independently as any respectable grocer or journalist of them all, but that you have no character whatever.'

Ossipon could not restrain a start of indignation.

`But what do you want from us?' he exclaimed in a deadened voice. `What is it you are after yourself?'

`A perfect detonator,' was the peremptory answer. `What are you making that face for? You see, you can't even bear the mention of something conclusive.'

`I am not making a face,' growled the annoyed Ossipon bearishly.

`You revolutionists,' the other continued, with leisurely self-confidence, `are the slaves of the social convention, which is afraid of you; slaves of it as much as the very police that stand up in the defence of that convention. Clearly you are, since you want to revolutionize it. It governs your thought, of course, and your action,