, said that
it could not go on--that it was a mistake. He took the blame on his
shoulders, he said, and would apologise himself later on. For many
minutes he harangued, and in the end the officer went away with his
eyes glittering, but not too reluctantly. He knew that I could have
killed him with my second chamber unless his first shot hit my
vitals....

After that there was a second scene--but one which was much more
brief. My chief attempted to deal with me, and to him I spoke my mind.
I am afraid I said many things which were so brusque that modern
society would have reproved me. I told him that it was well known that
he and every other man of position had been tremulously fearing death
at every turn for weeks, and had been unwilling to do anything when
they might have really saved the situation; merely because they were
so afraid; that everything had been misstated in the reports, and that
although the full truth might not be known for years, eventually it
would be known and people would understand. I said that this petty
life created by men without stomachs had ended by disgusting me, and
that I had finished with it for good and for ever. Then I went out in
silence, slamming the door behind me with all the strength of my
arms. It was a most enormous slam. It had to be so; it was my last
word. In my commandeered residence I found that the breath of
misfortune had also come. The rightful owners had managed to steal
into Peking in the train of some big official who had had an escort of
foreign soldiery provided him, and now smilingly and cringingly
greeted me, and thanked me for my guardianship during their
unavoidable absence. The Manchu women were grouped round in great
excitement. They did not relish the change--they did not want it. The
tall and stately one who had first touched my knee on that dark night
during the sack was not there.

The rightful owners irritated me intensely with their obsequiousness.
I was irritated because they lived: they should have ceased to exist
long ago. They were still very much afraid, although they had reached
Peking in safety, for they half thought that I would hand them over to
some provost-marshal as Boxer partisans in order to get rid of them.
They were very afraid. The Manchu women were all talking and praising
me, and telling wonderful stories of all I had done. But the most
important one of them was absent. I became vaguely conscious that this
also meant something, that p