in Europe had at most only suspected, or dimly guessed at.

He had had what I may call his underground life. And as I sat, evening
after evening, facing him at dinner, a curiosity in that direction
would naturally arise in my mind. I am a quiet and peaceable product of
civilization, and know no passion other than the passion for collecting
things which are rare, and must remain exquisite even if approaching to
the monstrous. Some Chinese bronzes are monstrously precious. And here
(out of my friend's collection), here I had before me a kind of rare
monster. It is true that this monster was polished and in a sense even
exquisite. His beautiful unruffled manner was that. But then he was
not of bronze. He was not even Chinese, which would have enabled one
to contemplate him calmly across the gulf of racial difference. He was
alive and European; he had the manner of good society, wore a coat and
hat like mine, and had pretty near the same taste in cooking. It was too
frightful to think of.

One evening he remarked, casually, in the course of conversation,
"There's no amendment to be got out of mankind except by terror and
violence."

You can imagine the effect of such a phrase out of such a man's mouth
upon a person like myself, whose whole scheme of life had been based
upon a suave and delicate discrimination of social and artistic values.
Just imagine! Upon me, to whom all sorts and forms of violence appeared
as unreal as the giants, ogres, and seven-headed hydras whose activities
affect, fantastically, the course of legends and fairy-tales!

I seemed suddenly to hear above the festive bustle and clatter of the
brilliant restaurant the mutter of a hungry and seditious multitude.

I suppose I am impressionable and imaginative. I had a disturbing
vision of darkness, full of lean jaws and wild eyes, amongst the hundred
electric lights of the place. But somehow this vision made me angry,
too. The sight of that man, so calm, breaking bits of white bread,
exasperated me. And I had the audacity to ask him how it was that the
starving proletariat of Europe to whom he had been preaching revolt and
violence had not been made indignant by his openly luxurious life. "At
all this," I said, pointedly, with a glance round the room and at the
bottle of champagne we generally shared between us at dinner.

He remained unmoved.

"Do I feed on their toil and their heart's blood? Am I a speculator or a
capitalist? Did I steal my fortun