n below, for indeed by what they could see
of her face she seemed to them to be dying. But Comrade Ossipon knew
that behind that white mask of despair there was struggling against
terror and despair a vigour of vitality, a love of life that could resist
the furious anguish which drives to murder and the fear, the blind, mad
fear of the gallows. He knew. But the stewardess and the chief steward
knew nothing, except that when they came back for her in less than five
minutes the lady in black was no longer in the hooded seat. She was
nowhere. She was gone. It was then five o'clock in the morning, and it
was no accident either. An hour afterwards one of the steamer's hands
found a wedding ring left lying on the seat. It had stuck to the wood in
a bit of wet, and its glitter caught the man's eye. There was a date,
24th June 1879, engraved inside. "_An impenetrable mystery is destined
to hang for ever_. . . . "

And Comrade Ossipon raised his bowed head, beloved of various humble
women of these isles, Apollo-like in the sunniness of its bush of hair.

The Professor had grown restless meantime. He rose.

"Stay," said Ossipon hurriedly. "Here, what do you know of madness and
despair?"

The Professor passed the tip of his tongue on his dry, thin lips, and
said doctorally:

"There are no such things. All passion is lost now. The world is
mediocre, limp, without force. And madness and despair are a force. And
force is a crime in the eyes of the fools, the weak and the silly who
rule the roost. You are mediocre. Verloc, whose affair the police has
managed to smother so nicely, was mediocre. And the police murdered him.
He was mediocre. Everybody is mediocre. Madness and despair! Give me
that for a lever, and I'll move the world. Ossipon, you have my cordial
scorn. You are incapable of conceiving even what the fat-fed citizen
would call a crime. You have no force." He paused, smiling sardonically
under the fierce glitter of his thick glasses.

"And let me tell you that this little legacy they say you've come into
has not improved your intelligence. You sit at your beer like a dummy.
Good-bye."

"Will you have it?" said Ossipon, looking up with an idiotic grin.

"Have what?"

"The legacy. All of it."

The incorruptible Professor only smiled. His clothes were all but
falling off him, his boots, shapeless with repairs, heavy like lead, let
water in at every step. He said:

"I will send you by