the whole of ethics. Well! what matters it?
what signifies a form of words? I regard you as a reptile, whom I would
rejoice, whom I long, to stamp under my heel. You would blow up others?
Well then, understand: I want, with every circumstance of infamy and
agony, to blow up you!"
"Somerset, Somerset!" said Zero, turning very pale, "this is wrong; this
is very wrong. You pain, you wound me, Somerset."
"Give me a match!" cried Somerset wildly. "Let me set fire to this
incomparable monster! Let me perish with him in his fall!"
"For God's sake," cried Zero, clutching hold of the young man, "for
God's sake command yourself! We stand upon the brink; death yawns around
us; a man--a stranger in this foreign land--one whom you have called
your friend----"
"Silence!" cried Somerset, "you are no friend, no friend of mine. I look
on you with loathing, like a toad: my flesh creeps with physical
repulsion; my soul revolts against the sight of you."
Zero burst into tears. "Alas!" he sobbed, "this snaps the last link that
bound me to humanity. My friend disowns--he insults me. I am indeed
accurst."
Somerset stood for an instant staggered by this sudden change of front.
The next moment, with a despairing gesture, he fled from the room and
from the house. The first dash of his escape carried him hard upon half
way to the next police-office; but presently began to droop; and before
he reached the house of lawful intervention, he fell once more among
doubtful counsels. Was he an agnostic? had he a right to act? Away with
such nonsense, and let Zero perish! ran his thoughts. And then again:
had he not promised, had he not shaken hands and broken bread? and that
with open eyes? and if so, how could he take action, and not forfeit
honour? But honour? what was honour? A figment, which, in the hot
pursuit of crime, he ought to dash aside. Ay, but crime? A figment, too,
which his enfranchised intellect discarded. All day, he wandered in the
parks, a prey to whirling thoughts; all night, patrolled the city; and
at the peep of day he sat down by the wayside in the neighbourhood of
Peckham and bitterly wept. His gods had fallen. He who had chosen the
broad, daylit, unencumbered paths of universal scepticism, found himself
still the bondslave of honour. He who had accepted life from a point of
view as lofty as the predatory eagle's, though with no design to prey;
he who had clearly recognised the common moral basis of war, of
commercia
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