ts to see him. He'll
go, all right. We'll have some fun, we'll be ready for him. Do you get
me? So long. The old man's waiting for me."

It may seem odd that this piece of information did not produce an
immediately revolting effect. I knew that similar practices had been
tried on Krebs, but this was the first time I had heard of a definite
plan, and from a man like Bitter. As I made my way out of the building
I had, indeed, a nauseated feeling; Jason's "lawyer" was a dirty little
man, smelling of stale cigars, with a blue-black, unshaven face. In
spite of the shocking nature of his confidence, he had actually not
succeeded in deflecting the current of my thoughts; these were still
running over the scene in the directors' room. I had listened to him
passively while he had held my buttonhole, and he had detained me but an
instant.

When I reached the street I was wondering whether Gorse and Dickinson
and the others, Grierson especially, could possibly have entertained the
belief that I would turn traitor? I told myself that I had no intention
of this. How could I turn traitor? and what would be the object?
revenge? The nauseated feeling grew more acute.... Reaching my office,
I shut the door, sat down at my desk, summoned my will, and began to
jot down random notes for the part of my speech I was to give the
newspapers, notes that were mere silly fragments of arguments I had once
thought effective. I could no more concentrate on them than I could have
written a poem. Gradually, like the smoke that settled down on our city
until we lived in darkness at midday, the horror of what Bitter had told
me began to pervade my mind, until I was in a state of terror.

Had I, Hugh Paret, fallen to this, that I could stand by consenting to
an act which was worse than assassination? Was any cause worth it? Could
any cause survive it? But my attempts at reasoning might be likened to
the strainings of a wayfarer lost on a mountain side to pick his way in
the gathering dusk. I had just that desperate feeling of being lost, and
with it went an acute sense of an imminent danger; the ground, no longer
firm under my feet, had become a sliding shale sloping toward an unseen
precipice. Perhaps, like the wayfarer, my fears were the sharper for the
memory of the beauty of the morning on that same mountain, when, filled
with vigour, I had gazed on it from the plain below and beheld the sun
breaking through the mists....

The necessity of taking