“See,” he said, with a curve of the finger which included most of the Map of Europe. “Here are countries engaged—like the Bandarlog—in their own affairs. Quarrelling, snatching things from each other, blustering or amusing themselves with transitory pomps and displays of power. Here is a huge empire whose immense, half-savage population has seethed for centuries in its hidden, boiling cauldron of rebellion. Oh! it has seethed! And only cruelties have repressed it. Now and then it has boiled over in assassination in high places, and one has wondered how long its autocratic splendour could hold its own. Here are small, fierce, helpless nations overrun and outraged into a chronic state of secret ever-ready hatred. Here are innocent, small countries, defenceless through their position and size. Here is France rich, careless, super-modern and cynic. Here is England comfortable to stolidity, prosperous and secure to dullness in her own half belief in a world civilization, which no longer argues in terms of blood and steel. And here—in a well-entrenched position in the midst of it all—within but a few hundreds of miles of weakness, complicity, disastrous unreadiness and panic-stricken uncertainty of purpose, sits this Man of One Dream—who believes God Himself his vassal. Here he sits.” “Yes his One Dream. He has had no other.” The Duchess was poring over the map also. They were as people pondering over a strange and terrible game. “It is his monomania. It possessed him when he was a boy. What Napoleon hoped to accomplish he has BELIEVED he could attain by concentrating all the power of people upon preparation for it—and by not flinching from pouring forth their blood as if it were the refuse water of his gutters.” “Yes—the blood—the blood!” the Duchess shuddered. “He would pour it forth without a qualm.” Coombe touched the map first at one point and then at another. “See!” he said again, and this time savagely. “This empire flattered and entangled by cunning, this country irritated, this deceived, this drawn into argument, this and this and this treated with professed friendship, these tricked and juggled with—And then, when his plans are ripe and he is made drunk with belief in himself—just one sodden insult or monstrous breach of faith, which all humanity must leap to resent—And there is our World Revolution.” The Duchess sat upright in her chair. “Why did you let your youth pass?” she said. “If you had begun early enough, you could hare made the country listen to you. Why did you do it?”