‘Is there more of it?’ said Colonel Halkett, flapping his forehead for coolness.

’The impudence of this dog in presuming to talk about India!—­eh, colonel?  Only a paragraph or two more:  I skip a lot . . . .  Ah! here we are.’  Captain Baskelett read to himself and laughed in derision:  ’He calls our Constitution a compact unsigned by the larger number involved in it.  What’s this?  “A band of dealers in fleshpottery.”  Do you detect a gleam of sense?  He underscores it.  Then he comes to this’:  Captain Baskelett requested Colonel Halkett to read for himself:  ’The stench of the trail of Ego in our History.’

The colonel perused it with an unsavoury expression of his features, and jumped up.

‘Oddly, Mr. Romfrey thought this rather clever,’ said Captain Baskelett, and read rapidly: 

’"Trace the course of Ego for them:  first the king who conquers and can govern.  In his egoism he dubs him holy; his family is of a selected blood; he makes the crown hereditary—­Ego.  Son by son the shame of egoism increases; valour abates; hereditary Crown, no hereditary qualities.  The Barons rise.  They in turn hold sway, and for their order—­Ego.  The traders overturn them:  each class rides the classes under it while it can.  It is ego—­ego, the fountain cry, origin, sole source of war!  Then death to ego, I say!  If those traders had ruled for other than ego, power might have rested with them on broad basis enough to carry us forward for centuries.  The workmen have ever been too anxious to be ruled.  Now comes on the workman’s era.  Numbers win in the end:  proof of small wisdom in the world.  Anyhow, with numbers there is rough nature’s wisdom and justice.  With numbers ego is inter-dependent and dispersed; it is universalized.  Yet these may require correctives.  If so, they will have it in a series of despots and revolutions that toss, mix, and bind the classes together:  despots, revolutions; panting alternations of the quickened heart of humanity.”

‘Marked by our friend Nevil in notes of admiration.’

‘Mad as the writer,’ groaned Colonel Halkett.  ’Never in my life have I heard such stuff.’

‘Stay, colonel; here’s Shrapnel defending Morality and Society,’ said Captain Baskelett.

Colonel Halkett vowed he was under no penal law to listen, and would not; but Captain Baskelett persuaded him:  ’Yes, here it is:  I give you my word.  Apparently old Nevil has been standing up for every man’s right to run away with . . .  Yes, really!  I give you my word; and here we have Shrapnel insisting on respect for the marriage laws.  Do hear this; here it is in black and white:—­