I ceased to hear the quarrel that was raising the voice of Mitchell and Lord Redcar.  This new fact sent them spinning into the background.  Young Verrall!

It was my own purpose coming to meet me half way.

There was to be a fight here, it seemed certain to come to a scuffle, and here we were—­

What was I to do?  I thought very swiftly.  Unless my memory cheats me, I acted with swift decision.  My hand tightened on my revolver, and then I remembered it was unloaded.  I had thought my course out in an instant.  I turned round and pushed my way out of the angry crowd that was now surging back towards the motor-car.

It would be quiet and out of sight, I thought, among the dump heaps across the road, and there I might load unobserved. . .

A big young man striding forward with his fists clenched, halted for one second at the sight of me.

“What!” said he.  “Ain’t afraid of them, are you?”

I glanced over my shoulder and back at him, was near showing him my pistol, and the expression changed in his eyes.  He hung perplexed at me.  Then with a grunt he went on.

I heard the voices growing loud and sharp behind me.

I hesitated, half turned towards the dispute, then set off running towards the heaps.  Some instinct told me not to be detected loading.  I was cool enough therefore to think of the aftermath of the thing I meant to do.

I looked back once again towards the swaying discussion—­or was it a fight now? and then I dropped into the hollow, knelt among the weeds, and loaded with eager trembling fingers.  I loaded one chamber, got up and went back a dozen paces, thought of possibilities, vacillated, returned and loaded all the others.  I did it slowly because I felt a little clumsy, and at the end came a moment of inspection—­had I forgotten any thing?  And then for a few seconds I crouched before I rose, resisting the first gust of reaction against my impulse.  I took thought, and for a moment that great green-white meteor overhead swam back into my conscious mind.  For the first time then I linked it clearly with all the fierce violence that had crept into human life.  I joined up that with what I meant to do.  I was going to shoot young Verrall as it were under the benediction of that green glare.

But about Nettie?

I found it impossible to think out that obvious complication.

I came up over the heap again, and walked slowly back towards the wrangle.

Of course I had to kill him. . . .

Now I would have you believe I did not want to murder young Verrall at all at that particular time.  I had not pictured such circumstances as these, I had never thought of him in connection with Lord Redcar and our black industrial world.  He was in that distant other world of Checkshill, the world of parks and gardens, the world of sunlit emotions and Nettie.  His appearance here was disconcerting.  I was taken by surprise.  I was too tired and hungry to think clearly, and the hard implication of our antagonism prevailed with me.  In the tumult of my passed emotions I had thought constantly of conflicts, confrontations, deeds of violence, and now the memory of these things took possession of me as though they were irrevocable resolutions.