"By-the-by, the literary genius of Dreadnought type who invented the Superman," began Courtley, who had been peaceably nibbling salted pistachios, "can’t pronounce his name for ginger-nuts, but it sounds something like a sneeze——" Von Herrnung said stiffly: "You doubtless speak of our great Nietzsche, whose triumphant thought has crushed all other mental systems." "Quite so. Must be the chap!" said Courtley. "That is, if he died a lunatic.... But possibly I’m mixing him up with some other philosopher of the crushing kind?" "No, no. It is true," corroborated von Herrnung. "The brain of Nietzsche gave way under the terrific strain of incessant creation. How should it be otherwise?" He became ponderous, even solemn, when he descanted upon the literary idol of Modern Germany. "How should it indeed be otherwise?" he demanded. "And was it not the fitting crown of such a career—the appropriate end to such a life-work?—to evolve the Superman—and die!" "Quite so, quite so!" Courtley agreed. He smoothed his well-trimmed beard with his broad hand, and his eyes assumed a meditative expression. "Rather tantalising—always hearing about Germany’s Supermen and never seeing any. What sort of chaps are they? I’m really keen to know." "You have not to go far," returned von Herrnung. His fine florid complexion had suffered a deteriorating change. Savage anger boiled in his blood. He had thrown the iron gauntlet of German military preparedness in the faces of these cool, well-bred, smiling English, and brandished the iron thunderbolt of German intellectual supremacy—and with this result—that they took his deadly earnestness as jest. "_Kreutzdonnerwetter!_ these English officers.... The pig-dogs! the sheep’s heads! ..." He swallowed down the abusive epithets he would have liked to pitch at them, and stiffened his huge frame arrogantly as he stared in Courtley’s simple face: "_Aber_—you have not far to go, to visualise the type conceived by Nietzsche. I and my comrades—_we_ are Supermen!" "Thanks for explaining, frightfully!" said Courtley with artless gratitude, as Brayham purpled apoplectically and even the Goblin tittered behind her fan. "Shall know what to ticket you now, you know. Thanks very much!" "You have read Nietzsche?" the sailor’s victim queried. Said Courtley, with his best air of frank simplicity: "His works were recommended to me by my doctor, when I had a bad attack of insomnia, about a year ago. Ordered a volume of ’Thus Spake Zara Somebody.’ Half a chapter did the business. No insomnia since then. Sleep like a mite in a Gorgonzola, the instant my head touches the pillow—never read another word. But heaps of friends in the Fleet’ll be wanting to borrow the book presently, depend on it. For we’ll all be too scared of Germany to sleep—in the year 1916." Laughter broke forth. Lady Wathe gasped, dabbing her tearful eyes with a lace-bordered handkerchief: