the miserable, helpless, and defenceless; there
were greed, and self-seeking, stripped naked; but more revolting to see
without a mask was that falsehood which had been hiding under the words
that for ages had spurred men to noble deeds, to self-sacrifice, to
heroism. What was appalling was the sudden perception that all the
traditional ideals of honour, glory, conscience, had been committed to
the upholding of a gigantic and atrocious fraud. The falsehood had
spread stealthily, had eaten into the very heart of creeds and
convictions that we lean upon on our passage between the past and the
future. The old order of things had to live or perish with a lie. I saw
all this with the intensity and clearness of a revelation; I saw it as
though I had been asleep through a year of work and dreams, and had
awakened to the truth. I saw it all; I saw her intention. What was I to
do?

Without my marking its approach emotion was upon me. The fingers that
held up the extended slips tattooed one on another through its
negligible thickness.

"Pretty thick that," Soane said. He was looking back at me from the
cupboard he had opened. "I've rubbed it in, too ... there'll be hats on
the green to-morrow." He had his head inside the cupboard, and his voice
came to me hollowly. He extracted a large bottle with a gilt-foiled
neck.

"Won't it upset the apple cart to-morrow," he said, very loudly; "won't
it?"

His voice acted on me as the slight shake upon a phial full of waiting
chemicals; crystallised them suddenly with a little click. Everything
suddenly grew very clear to me. I suddenly understood that all the
tortuous intrigue hinged upon what I did in the next few minutes. It
rested with me now to stretch out my hand to that button in the wall or
to let the whole world--"the ... the probity ... that sort of thing,"
she had said--fall to pieces. The drone of the presses continued to make
itself felt like the quiver of a suppressed emotion. I might stop them
or I might not. It rested with me.

Everybody was in my hands; they were quite small. If I let the thing go
on, they would be done for utterly, and the new era would begin.

Soane had got hold of a couple of long-stalked glasses. They clinked
together whilst he searched the cupboard for something.

"Eh, what?" he said. "It _is_ pretty _strong_, isn't it? Ought to shake
out some of the supporters, eh? Bill comes on to-morrow ... do for that,
I should think." He wanted a corkscre