Paul repeated the insult.

“Say that agen!” blustered the cocked-hatted leader.

Paul said it again and nothing happened, Billy received vociferous and sanguinary advice couched in sanguinary terms.

“Try and hit me!” said Billy.

The scene was oddly parallel with one in the story of the outcast boy of the gutter.  Paul, conscious of experiment, calmly went up to him and kicked him.  He kicked him hard.  The sensation was delicious.  Billy edged away.  He knew from past experience that if it came to blows he was no match for Paul, but hitherto, having shown fight, he had received the support of the gang.  Now, however, there was an extraordinary quality in Paul’s defiance which took the spirit out of him.  Once more he was urged by the ragged brats to deeds of blood.  He did not respond.  Paul kicked him again before his followers.  If he could have gone on kicking him for ever and ever what delirium of joy were eternity!  Billy edged farther away.  The mongrel game-cock was beaten.  Paul, dramatically conscious of what the unrecognized prince would do in such a circumstance, advanced, smacked his face, plucked the cocked hat from his head, the sword from his hand, and invested himself with these insignia of leadership, Billy melted silently into the subfusc air of Budge Street.  The ragged regiment looked around and there was no Billy.  Paul Keg worthy, the raggedest of them all, with nothing to recommend him but his ridiculous exotic beauty and the paper and wooden spolia opima of the vanquished, stood before them, a tattered Caesar.  The gang hung spellbound.  They were ready, small band of heroes, to follow him against the hordes of Stamford Street.  They only awaited his signal.  Paul tasted a joy known but to few of the sons of men-absolute power over, and supreme contempt for, his fellows.  He stood for a moment or two, in the grey, miserable street discordant with the wailings of babies and the clamour of futile little girls, who, after the manner of women, had no idea of political crisis, and the shrill objurgations of slattern mothers and the raucous cries of an idealist vendor of hyacinths, and, cocked hat on head and wooden sword in hand, he looked at his fawning army.  Then came the touch of genius that was often to characterize his actions in after years.  It was mimetic, as he had read of such a thing in his paper-covered textbooks-but it was none the less a touch of genius.  He frowned on the dirty, ignoble little boys.  What had he in common with them-he, the son of a prince?  Nothing.  He snapped his sword across his knee, tore his cocked hat in two, and, casting the fragments before them, marched proudly toward the very last place on the face of the earth that he desired to visit-his own home.  The army remained for a few seconds bewildered by the dramatic and unexpected, and, leaderless, did what many a real army has done in similar circumstances, straggled into disintegration.