shook his head, but gave no explanations. How could he explain?
He was appalled at the awful intellectual chasm that yawned between him
and his people. He could never cross it and explain to them his
position,--the Nietzschean position, in regard to socialism. There were
not words enough in the English language, nor in any language, to make
his attitude and conduct intelligible to them. Their highest concept of
right conduct, in his case, was to get a job. That was their first word
and their last. It constituted their whole lexicon of ideas. Get a job!
Go to work! Poor, stupid slaves, he thought, while his sister talked.
Small wonder the world belonged to the strong. The slaves were obsessed
by their own slavery. A job was to them a golden fetich before which
they fell down and worshipped.

He shook his head again, when Gertrude offered him money, though he knew
that within the day he would have to make a trip to the pawnbroker.

"Don't come near Bernard now," she admonished him. "After a few months,
when he is cooled down, if you want to, you can get the job of drivin'
delivery-wagon for him. Any time you want me, just send for me an' I'll
come. Don't forget."

She went away weeping audibly, and he felt a pang of sorrow shoot through
him at sight of her heavy body and uncouth gait. As he watched her go,
the Nietzschean edifice seemed to shake and totter. The slave-class in
the abstract was all very well, but it was not wholly satisfactory when
it was brought home to his own family. And yet, if there was ever a
slave trampled by the strong, that slave was his sister Gertrude. He
grinned savagely at the paradox. A fine Nietzsche-man he was, to allow
his intellectual concepts to be shaken by the first sentiment or emotion
that strayed along--ay, to be shaken by the slave-morality itself, for
that was what his pity for his sister really was. The true noble men
were above pity and compassion. Pity and compassion had been generated
in the subterranean barracoons of the slaves and were no more than the
agony and sweat of the crowded miserables and weaklings.

CHAPTER XL

"Overdue" still continued to lie forgotten on the table. Every
manuscript that he had had out now lay under the table. Only one
manuscript he kept going, and that was Brissenden's "Ephemera." His
bicycle and black suit were again in pawn, and the type-writer people
were once more worrying about the rent. But such things no