My God, what was honour to me if I could see nothing but her on earth?
Would honour or wine or sun or wind ever give me what she could give?
Let them go.

"What would happen if what?" Soane grumbled, "_D--n_ this wire."

"Oh, I was thinking about something," I answered. The wire gave with a
little snap and he began to ease the cork. Was I to let the light pass
me by for the sake of ... of Fox, for instance, who trusted me? Well,
let Fox go. And Churchill and what Churchill stood for; the probity; the
greatness and the spirit of the past from which had sprung my
conscience and the consciences of the sleeping millions around me--the
woman at the poultry show with her farmers and shopkeepers. Let them go
too.

Soane put into my hand one of his charged glasses. He seemed to rise out
of the infinite, a forgotten shape. I sat down at the desk opposite him.

"Deuced good idea," he said, suddenly, "to stop the confounded presses
and spoof old Fox. He's up to some devilry. And, by Jove, I'd like to
get my knife in him; Jove, I would. And then chuck up everything and
leave for the Sandwich Islands. I'm sick of this life, this dog's
life.... One might have made a pile though, if one'd known this smash
was coming. But one can't get at the innards of things.--No such
luck--no such luck, eh?" I looked at him stupidly; took in his
blood-shot eyes and his ruffled grizzling hair. I wondered who he was.
_"Il s'agissait de_...?" I seemed to be back in Paris, I couldn't think
of what I had been thinking of. I drank his glass of wine and he filled
me another. I drank that too.