-and-by a small bill for certain chemicals which I
shall order to-morrow. I need them badly. Understood--eh?"

Ossipon lowered his head slowly. He was alone. "_An impenetrable
mystery_. . . . " It seemed to him that suspended in the air before him
he saw his own brain pulsating to the rhythm of an impenetrable mystery.
It was diseased clearly. . . . "_This act of madness or despair_."

The mechanical piano near the door played through a valse cheekily, then
fell silent all at once, as if gone grumpy.

Comrade Ossipon, nicknamed the Doctor, went out of the Silenus beer-hall.
At the door he hesitated, blinking at a not too splendid sunlight--and
the paper with the report of the suicide of a lady was in his pocket.
His heart was beating against it. The suicide of a lady--_this act of
madness or despair_.

He walked along the street without looking where he put his feet; and he
walked in a direction which would not bring him to the place of
appointment with another lady (an elderly nursery governess putting her
trust in an Apollo-like ambrosial head). He was walking away from it.
He could face no woman. It was ruin. He could neither think, work,
sleep, nor eat. But he was beginning to drink with pleasure, with
anticipation, with hope. It was ruin. His revolutionary career,
sustained by the sentiment and trustfulness of many women, was menaced by
an impenetrable mystery--the mystery of a human brain pulsating
wrongfully to the rhythm of journalistic phrases. " . . . _Will hang for
ever over this act_. . . . It was inclining towards the gutter . . . _of
madness or despair_."

"I am seriously ill," he muttered to himself with scientific insight.
Already his robust form, with an Embassy's secret-service money
(inherited from Mr Verloc) in his pockets, was marching in the gutter as
if in training for the task of an inevitable future. Already he bowed
his broad shoulders, his head of ambrosial locks, as if ready to receive
the leather yoke of the sandwich board. As on that night, more than a
week ago, Comrade Ossipon walked without looking where he put his feet,
feeling no fatigue, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, hearing not a sound.
"_An impenetrable mystery_. . . ." He walked disregarded. . . . "_This
act of madness or despair_."

And the incorruptible Professor walked too, averting his eyes from the
odious multitude of mankind. He had no future. He disdained it. He was
a force. His thoughts caresse