"A torpedo," cried Zero, brightening, "a torpedo in the Thames! Superb, dear fellow! I recognise in you the marks of an accomplished anarch." "True!" returned Somerset. "It cannot so be done; and there is no help but you must carry it away with you. Come on, then, and let me at once consign you to a train." "Nay, nay, dear boy," protested Zero. "There is now no call for me to leave. My character is now reinstated; my fame brightens; this is the best thing I have done yet; and I see from here the ovations that await the author of the Golden Square Atrocity." "My young friend," returned the other, "I give you your choice. I will either see you safe on board a train or safe in gaol." "Somerset, this is unlike you!" said the chemist. "You surprise me, Somerset." "I shall considerably more surprise you at the next police office," returned Somerset, with something bordering on rage. "For on one point my mind is settled: either I see you packed off to America, brick and all, or else you dine in prison." "You have perhaps neglected one point," returned the unoffended Zero: "for, speaking as a philosopher, I fail to see what means you can employ to force me. The will, my dear fellow----" "Now, see here," interrupted Somerset. "You are ignorant of anything but science, which I can never regard as being truly knowledge; I, sir, have studied life; and allow me to inform you that I have but to raise my hand and voice--here in this street--and the mob----" "Good God in Heaven, Somerset," cried Zero, turning deadly white and stopping in his walk, "great God in Heaven, what words are these? Oh, not in jest, not even in jest, should they be used! The brutal mob, the savage passions.... Somerset, for God's sake, a public-house!" Somerset considered him with freshly awakened curiosity. "This is very interesting," said he. "You recoil from such a death?" "Who would not?" asked the plotter. "And to be blown up by dynamite," inquired the young man, "doubtless strikes you as a form of euthanasia?" "Pardon me," returned Zero: "I own, and, since I have braved it daily in my professional career, I own it even with pride: it is a death unusually distasteful to the mind of man." "One more question," said Somerset; "you object to Lynch Law? why?" "It is assassination," said the plotter calmly; but with eyebrows a little lifted, as in wonder at the question. "Shake hands with me," cried Somerset. "Thank God, I have now no ill-feeling left; and though you cannot conceive how I burn to see you on the gallows, I can quite contentedly assist at your departure."