p. "Force of personality,"
he repeated, with ostentatious calm. "I have the means to make myself
deadly, but that by itself, you understand, is absolutely nothing in the
way of protection. What is effective is the belief those people have in
my will to use the means. That's their impression. It is absolute.
Therefore I am deadly."

"There are individuals of character amongst that lot too," muttered
Ossipon ominously.

"Possibly. But it is a matter of degree obviously, since, for instance,
I am not impressed by them. Therefore they are inferior. They cannot be
otherwise. Their character is built upon conventional morality. It
leans on the social order. Mine stands free from everything artificial.
They are bound in all sorts of conventions. They depend on life, which,
in this connection, is a historical fact surrounded by all sorts of
restraints and considerations, a complex organised fact open to attack at
every point; whereas I depend on death, which knows no restraint and
cannot be attacked. My superiority is evident."

"This is a transcendental way of putting it," said Ossipon, watching the
cold glitter of the round spectacles. "I've heard Karl Yundt say much
the same thing not very long ago."

"Karl Yundt," mumbled the other contemptuously, "the delegate of the
International Red Committee, has been a posturing shadow all his life.
There are three of you delegates, aren't there? I won't define the other
two, as you are one of them. But what you say means nothing. You are
the worthy delegates for revolutionary propaganda, but the trouble is not
only that you are as unable to think independently as any respectable
grocer or journalist of them all, but that you have no character
whatever."

Ossipon could not restrain a start of indignation.

"But what do you want from us?" he exclaimed in a deadened voice. "What
is it you are after yourself?"

"A perfect detonator," was the peremptory answer. "What are you making
that face for? You see, you can't even bear the mention of something
conclusive."

"I am not making a face," growled the annoyed Ossipon bearishly.

"You revolutionists," the other continued, with leisurely
self-confidence, "are the slaves of the social convention, which is
afraid of you; slaves of it as much as the very police that stands up in
the defence of that convention. Clearly you are, since you want to
revolutionise it. It governs your thought, of course, and your action