awers in the way of duty, and found a little useful information.
The most interesting part was his diary; for this man, engaged in such
deadly work, had the weakness to keep a record of the most damnatory
kind. There were his acts and also his thoughts laid bare to us. But the
dead don't mind that. They don't mind anything.

"'From conviction.' Yes. A vague but ardent humanitarianism had urged
him in his first youth into the bitterest extremity of negation and
revolt. Afterwards his optimism flinched. He doubted and became lost.
You have heard of converted atheists. These turn often into dangerous
fanatics, but the soul remains the same. After he had got acquainted
with the girl, there are to be met in that diary of his very queer
politico-amorous rhapsodies. He took her sovereign grimaces with deadly
seriousness. He longed to convert her. But all this cannot interest you.
For the rest, I don't know if you remember--it is a good many years ago
now--the journalistic sensation of the 'Hermione Street Mystery'; the
finding of a man's body in the cellar of an empty house; the inquest;
some arrests; many surmises--then silence--the usual end for many
obscure martyrs and confessors. The fact is, he was not enough of an
optimist. You must be a savage, tyrannical, pitiless, thick-and-thin
optimist, like Horne, for instance, to make a good social rebel of the
extreme type.

"He rose from the table. A waiter hurried up with his overcoat; another
held his hat in readiness.

"But what became of the young lady?" I asked.

"Do you really want to know?" he said, buttoning himself in his fur coat
carefully. "I confess to the small malice of sending her Sevrin's diary.
She went into retirement; then she went to Florence; then she went into
retreat in a convent. I can't tell where she will go next. What does it
matter? Gestures! Gestures! Mere gestures of her class."

"He fitted on his glossy high hat with extreme precision, and casting
a rapid glance round the room, full of well-dressed people, innocently
dining, muttered between his teeth:

"And nothing else! That is why their kind is fated to perish."

"I never met Mr. X again after that evening. I took to dining at my club.
On my next visit to Paris I found my friend all impatience to hear of
the effect produced on me by this rare item of his collection. I
told him all the story, and he beamed on me with the pride of his
distinguished specimen.

"'Isn't X well worth knowing?