thargy; at each movement in his press
adjustment he felt he lifted a weight. And as for his honour--that too
throbbed and puffed. How did he stand? What precisely had happened in
the last ten minutes? What would happen next? He knew that here was
enormous matter for thought, and he could not think save in disordered
snatches.

His mood was a sort of stagnant astonishment. All his conceptions were
overthrown. He had regarded his security from physical violence as
inherent, as one of the conditions of life. So, indeed, it had been
while he wore his middle-class costume, had his middle-class property to
serve for his defence. But who would interfere among Labour roughs
fighting together? And indeed in those days no man would. In the
Underworld there was no law between man and man; the law and machinery
of the state had become for them something that held men down, fended
them off from much desirable property and pleasure, and that was all.
Violence, that ocean in which the brutes live for ever, and from which a
thousand dykes and contrivances have won our hazardous civilised life,
had flowed in again upon the sinking underways and submerged them. The
fist ruled. Denton had come right down at last to the elemental--fist
and trick and the stubborn heart and fellowship--even as it was in the
beginning.

The rhythm of his machine changed, and his thoughts were interrupted.

Presently he could think again. Strange how quickly things had happened!
He bore these men who had thrashed him no very vivid ill-will. He was
bruised and enlightened. He saw with absolute fairness now the
reasonableness of his unpopularity. He had behaved like a fool. Disdain,
seclusion, are the privilege of the strong. The fallen aristocrat still
clinging to his pointless distinction is surely the most pitiful
creature of pretence in all this clamant universe. Good heavens! what
was there for him to despise in these men?

What a pity he had not appreciated all this better five hours ago!

What would happen at the end of the spell? He could not tell. He could
not imagine. He could not imagine the thoughts of these men. He was
sensible only of their hostility and utter want of sympathy. Vague
possibilities of shame and violence chased one another across his mind.
Could he devise some weapon? He recalled his assault upon the hypnotist,
but there were no detachable lamps here. He could see nothing that he
could catch up in his defence.

For a space he