common purpose. But mine is the master mind. As for you. Well, you have
parted with your past ... and there is no future for you. That is true.
You have nowhere to go to; have nothing left, nothing in the world. That
is true too. But what is that to me? A set of facts--that you have
parted with your past and have no future. You had to do the work; I had
to make you do it. I chose you because you would do it. That is all....
I knew you; knew your secret places, your weaknesses. That is my power.
I stand for the Inevitable, for the future that goes on its way; you for
the past that lies by the roadside. If for your sake I had swerved one
jot from my allotted course, I should have been untrue. There was a
danger, once, for a minute.... But I stood out against it. What would
you have had me do? Go under as Fox went under? Speak like him, look as
he looks now.... Me? Well, I did not."

"I was in the hands of the future; I never swerved; I went on my way. I
had to judge men as I judged you; to corrupt, as I corrupted you. I
cajoled; I bribed; I held out hopes; and with every one, as with you, I
succeeded. It is in that power that the secret of the greatness which is
virtue, lies. I had to set about a work of art, of an art strange to
you; as strange, as alien as the arts of dead peoples. You are the dead
now, mine the art of an ensuing day. All that remains to you is to fold
your hands and wonder, as you wondered before the gates of Nineveh. I
had to sound the knell of the old order; of your virtues, of your
honours, of your faiths, of ... of altruism, if you like. Well, it is
sounded. I was forever on the watch; I foresaw; I forestalled; I have
never rested. And you...."

"And I ..." I said, "I only loved you."

There was a silence. I seemed for a moment to see myself a tenuous,