u mean that this
committal of the life-issue of inferior beings to someone higher shall
be made voluntarily--a sort of voluntary self-gift of the inferiors--"

"Yes--more or less--and a voluntary acceptance. For it's no pretty gift,
after all.--But once made it must be held fast by genuine power.
Oh yes--no playing and fooling about with it. Permanent and very
efficacious power."

"You mean military power?"

"I do, of course."

Here Levison smiled a long, slow, subtle smile of ridicule. It all
seemed to him the preposterous pretentiousness of a megalomaniac--one
whom, after a while, humanity would probably have the satisfaction of
putting into prison, or into a lunatic asylum. And Levison felt
strong, overwhelmingly strong, in the huge social power with which
he, insignificant as he was, was armed against such criminal-imbecile
pretensions as those above set forth. Prison or the lunatic asylum.
The face of the fellow gloated in these two inevitable engines of his
disapproval.

"It will take you some time before you'll get your doctrines accepted,"
he said.

"Accepted! I'd be sorry. I don't want a lot of swine snouting and
sniffing at me with their acceptance.--Bah, Levison--one can easily make
a fool of you. Do you take this as my gospel?"

"I take it you are speaking seriously."

Here Lilly broke into that peculiar, gay, whimsical smile.

"But I should say the blank opposite with just as much fervour," he
declared.

"Do you mean to say you don't MEAN what you've been saying?" said
Levison, now really looking angry.

"Why, I'll tell you the real truth," said Lilly. "I think every man is a
sacred and holy individual, NEVER to be violated; I think there is only
one thing I hate to the verge of madness, and that is BULLYING. To see
any living creature BULLIED, in any way, almost makes a murderer of me.
That is true. Do you believe it--?"

"Yes," said Levison unwillingly. "That may be true as well. You have no
doubt, like most of us, got a complex nature which--"

C R A S H!

There intervened one awful minute of pure shock, when the soul was in
darkness.

Out of this shock Aaron felt himself issuing amid a mass of terrible
sensations: the fearful blow of the explosion, the noise of glass, the
hoarse howl of people, the rushing of men, the sudden gulf, the awful
gulfing whirlpool of horror in the social life.

He stood in agony and semi-blindness amid a chaos. Then as he began to
recover his consciousn