knows," he exclaimed indignantly, "that I only procured the sulphuric acid
from him for domestic purposes."

My eyes were riveted on the doctor's face, and only to one who knew him
well could the expression be at all decipherable. To me it distinctly
denoted disappointment--that humiliating sense of disappointment and
disillusion which must invariably come upon a man of strong and fanatical
convictions when brought into contact with the meanness and cowardice of
his fellows.

Dr. Armitage was a fanatic and an idealist, and two convictions were
paramount in his mind at this time: the necessity and the justice of the
"propaganda by force" doctrine preached by the more advanced Anarchists,
and the absolute good faith and devotion to principle of the men with whom
he was associated. A man of the Myers type was quite incomprehensible to
him. Not for a single instant had Armitage hesitated to throw open the
doors of his Harley Street establishment to the Anarchists: to him the
cause was everything, and interests, prudence, prospects, all had to give
way before it. And here was this man who had professed the same principles
as himself, with whom he had discoursed freely on the necessity of force,
who had openly advocated dynamite in his presence--this man who had spoken
of the revolution and the regeneration of Society with the same warmth as
himself--talking of "domestic purposes," and ready to recant all that he
had preached and said. And what lay behind this reticence and these
denials? Treachery of the basest kind, and the most sordid, abominable
calculations which it was possible to conceive.

These thoughts I read in the doctor's face, and turning my eyes from him
to the abject Jacob I could only wonder at the naive sincerity of
Armitage, which could ever have laid him open to such illusions and