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 I've started the game and I must see it out; I've put my hand to the plough and I mustn't go back. That's why I came to London—to get it over with myself. It was running up against you, set me off. You caught me at the crisis."

"Ah!" said Melville.

"But for all that, the thing is as I said—none of these things interest me really. It won't alter the fact that I am committed to fight a phantom election about nothing in particular, for a party that's been dead ten years. And if the ghosts win, go into the Parliament as a constituent spectre. There it is—as a mental phenomenon!"

He reiterated his cardinal article. "The interest is dead," he said, "the will has no soul."

He became more critical. He bent a little closer to Melville's ear. "It isn't really that I don't believe. When I say I