This, by the aid of a hairpin that had fallen into her lap, he pinned to her apron. Then, with another laugh, he left her beneath the glare of the light, and went out into the street. He was thrilled, like a drunken man, with a new sense of life. Years had fallen from his shoulders. He had solved the riddle of the world. Baseness, treachery, cruelty, he felt them pulsating in his heart with a maddening joy of existence. Evil was his good. He was no longer even a base, treacherous, cruel man. He was a devil incarnate. The long exultant years in front of him would be spent in deeds of shame and crime and unprecedented wickedness. If there was a throne to be waded to through slaughter, through slaughter would he wade to it. He would shut the gates of Mercy on mankind. He held out both hands in front of him with stiffened outspread fingers. If only there was a human throat between them, how they would close around it, how he would gloat over the dying agony! Caligula was the man for him. He regretted his untimely death. What a colleague could have been made of the fiend who wished that the whole human race had one neck so that it could be severed at one blow! He had reached this stage in his exultant reflections when he found himself outside a restaurant which he had never entered, at the Oxford Street end of the Tottenham Court Road. He remembered that he was hungry; that a new-born spirit of wickedness must be fed. He went in, unconscious of the company or the surroundings, and ordered supper. The waiter said that it was nearly closing time. Quixtus called for a plate of cold beef and a whisky-and-soda. He devoured the meat ravenously, forgetful of the bread by his side, and drank the drink at a gulp. Having lit a cigar, he threw half a sovereign on the table and walked out. He walked along the streets heedless of direction, down Shaftesbury Avenue, across Piccadilly Circus blazing with light, through Leicester Square, along the still hurrying Strand to Fleet Street noiseless and empty, his brain on fire, weaving exquisite fabrics of devilry. Suddenly he halted on a glorious thought. Why should he not begin there and then? The whole of London, with its crime and sin and rottenness, lay before him. He retraced his steps back to the Babylon of the West. What could he do? Where could he find adequate wickedness? When he reached Charing Cross again it was dark and deserted. A square mile of London has every night about an hour of tearing, surging, hectic life. Then all of a sudden the thousands of folk are swept away to the four comers of the mighty city, and all is still. A woman, as Quixtus passed, quickened her pace and murmured words. Here was a partner in wickedness to his hand. But the flesh of the delicately fibred man revolted simultaneously with the thought. No. That did not come within his scheme of wickedness. He slipped a coin into the woman’s palm, because she looked so forlorn, and went his way. She was useless for his purpose.