haps it's as
well I don't know who the man was, for if I did, I'd kill him!"

He set his teeth and glowered at nothing and smote his left palm with
his right fist, and there was a long silence. Presently he repeated:

"I'd kill him!"

We fell to discussing the whole matter over again. Why, I asked, should
we assume that the poor child was led astray by a villain? Might there
not have been a romantic marriage which, for some reason we could not
guess, she desired to keep secret for a tune? Had she not been bright
and happy from January to June? And that night of tragedy... What more
likely than that she had gone forth to keep tryst with her husband and
accidentally met her death? "He arrives," said I, "waits for her. She
never comes. He goes away. The next day he learns from local gossip or
from newspapers what has happened. He thinks it best to keep silent and
let her fair name be untouched...What have you to say against that
theory?"

"Possible," he replied. "Anything conceivable within the limits of
physical possibility is possible. But it isn't probable. I have an
intuitive feeling that there was villainy about--and if ever I get hold
of that man--God help him!"

So there was nothing more to be said.

CHAPTER X

I haven't that universal sympathy which is the most irritating
attribute of saints and other pacifists. When, for instance, anyone of
the fraternity arguing from the Sermon on the Mount tells me that I
ought to love Germans, either I admit the obligation and declare that,
as I am a miserable sinner, I have no compunction in breaking it, or,
if he is a very sanctimonious saint, I remind him that, such creatures
as modern Germans not having been invented on or about the year A.D.
30, the rule about loving your enemies could not possibly apply. At
least I imagine I do one of these two things (sometimes, indeed, I
dream gloatfully over acts of physical violence) when I read the
pronouncements of such a person; for I have to my great good fortune
never met him in the flesh. If there are any saintly pacifists in
Wellingsford, they keep sedulously out of my way, and they certainly do
not haunt my Service Club. And these are the only two places in which I
have my being. Even Gedge doesn't talk of loving Germans. He just lumps
all the belligerents together in one conglomerate hatred, for upsetting
his comfortable social scheme.

As I say, I lack the universal sympathy of the saint. I can't like
peop