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He strained his arms up into the air above his head, and rotated upon his hips as if about to perform some eccentric dance. Then he continued, 'You may ask, cannot I think differently? Why can I not purge myself of this order of thinking? Well, of course there are some things that everyone thinks which hot irons could not burn out of them. It is the circumstances of the time in which we live which have made it impossible for me to mistake my road: there have been signposts or rather lurid beacons all the way along it, leading to only one end, to one conclusion. How anyone, as historically informed as I am, can come to any very different conclusions from my own I find it hard to understand. They must have blind eyes for all the flaming signs. But really there is no more to say, I have resigned my professorship. On Monday I am going to the offices of the steamship company.'

'The picture you have painted certainly is black,' said Mary.

'En effet, il est bien noir,' the mother assented.

'The worst of it is'—and a smile it had had vanished from Mary's face—'that it does not seem to be blacker than life. That is the worst of it.'