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“‘Nothing. They can do nothing to him,’ I assured her, with perfect truth. I was pretty certain he had died in less than twenty minutes from the moment his hand had gone to his lips. For if his fanatical anti-anarchism went even as far as carrying poison in his pocket, only to rob his adversaries of legitimate vengeance, I knew he would take care to provide something that would not fail him when required.

“She drew an angry breath. There were red spots on her cheeks and a feverish brilliance in her eyes.

“‘Has ever any one been exposed to such a terrible experience? To think that he had held my hand! That man!’ Her face twitched, she gulped down a pathetic sob. ‘If I ever felt sure of anything, it was of Sevrin’s high-minded motives.’

“Then she began to weep quietly, which was good for her. Then through her flood of tears, half resentful, ‘What was it he said to me? — “From conviction!” It seemed a vile mockery. What could he mean by it?’

“‘That, my dear young lady,’ I said, gently, ‘is more than I or anybody else can ever explain to you.'”

Mr. X flicked a crumb off the front of his coat.

“And that was strictly true as to her. Though Horne, for instance, understood very well; and so did I, especially after we had been to Sevrin’s lodging in a dismal back street of an intensely respectable quarter. Horne was known there as a friend, and we had no difficulty in being admitted, the slatternly maid merely remarking, as she let us in, that ‘Mr Sevrin had not been home that night.’ We forced open a couple of drawers 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?” he bubbled over in great delight. “He’s unique, amazing, absolutely terrific.”

His enthusiasm grated upon my finer feelings. I told him curtly that the man’s cynicism was simply abominable.

“Oh, abominable! abominable!” assented my friend, effusively. “And then, you know, he likes to have his little joke sometimes,” he added in a confidential tone.

I fail to understand the connection of this last remark. I have been utterly unable to discover where in all this the joke comes in.