“What I have to do,” I said, “is to show her that ... that I had her in my hands and that I co-operated loyally.”

The thing was so simple that I triumphed; triumphed with the full glow of wine, triumphed looking down into that murky court-yard where the lanthorns danced about in the rays of a great arc lamp.  The gilt letters scattered all over the windows blazed forth the names of Fox’s innumerable ventures.  Well, he ... he had been a power, but I triumphed.  I had co-operated loyally with the powers of the future, though I wanted no share in the inheritance of the earth.  Only, I was going to push into the future.  One of the great carts got into motion amidst a shower of sounds that whirled upward round and round the well.  The black hood swayed like the shoulders of an elephant as it passed beneath my feet under the arch.  It disappeared—­it was co-operating too; in a few hours people at the other end of the country—­of the world—­would be raising their hands.  Oh, yes, it was co-operating loyally.

I closed the window.  Soane was holding a champagne bottle in one hand.  In the other he had a paper knife of Fox’s—­a metal thing, a Japanese dagger or a Deccan knife.  He sliced the neck off the bottle.

“Thought you were going to throw yourself out,” he said; “I wouldn’t stop you. I’m sick of it ... sick.”

“Look at this ... to-night ... this infernal trick of Fox’s....  And I helped too....  Why?...  I must eat.”  He paused “... and drink,” he added.  “But there is starvation for no end of fools in this little move.  A few will be losing their good names too....  I don’t care, I’m off....  By-the-bye:  What is he doing it for?  Money?  Funk?—­You ought to know.  You must be in it too.  It’s not hunger with you.  Wonderful what people will do to keep their pet vice going....  Eh?” He swayed a little.  “You don’t drink—­what’s your pet vice?”

He looked at me very defiantly, clutching the neck of the empty bottle.  His drunken and overbearing glare seemed to force upon me a complicity in his squalid bargain with life, rewarded by a squalid freedom.  He was pitiful and odious to my eyes; and somehow in a moment he appeared menacing.

“You can’t frighten me,” I said, in response to the strange fear he had inspired.  “No one can frighten me now.”  A sense of my inaccessibility was the first taste of an achieved triumph.  I had done with fear.  The poor devil before me appeared infinitely remote.  He was lost; but he was only one of the lost; one of those that I could see already overwhelmed by the rush from the flood-gates opened at my touch.  He would be destroyed in good company; swept out of my sight together with the past they had known and with the future they had waited for.  But he was odious.  “I am done with you,” I said.

“Eh; what?...  Who wants to frighten?...  I wanted to know what’s your pet vice....  Won’t tell?  You might safely—­I’m off....  No....  Want to tell me mine?...  No time....  I’m off....  Ask the policeman ... crossing sweeper will do....  I’m going.”