Page:The council of seven.djvu/156

 seated in the far corner of the carriage, he saw the image of one capable of doing evil for the love of it. A monster of wickedness confronted him. But in this moment of suffering, his thought was less of the woman he loved than of the country he adored. By what cruel turn of Fate's shuttle had she, the conqueror of half the world, been conquered by antichrist himself?

This secret power behind the great movements of the time, this framer of policies, foreign and domestic, this boss of all bosses, this big serpent who swallowed the little serpents, what a commentary he was on the world that he governed! Was it possible, that in the act of recoil from the highest moment in her history, Civilization should now be in bondage to a mere beast!

Still looking at the hooded eyes of the man opposite, a strange light came into those of John Endor. As in a glass darkly he saw the final degradation, the ultimate doom of the thing he loved beyond all other things. "One with Nineveh and Tyre." How often had antichrist, and with what a gusto, blazoned these words in the pages of his own newspapers. He even printed them in Greek on appropriate occasions. Cynicism raised to this power was the perquisite of no common man.

Man he hardly seemed to be as there he sat, looking at the light in the face of John Endor and yet characteristically heedless of its cause. Truly, the mind becomes subdued to that in which it works! Having, with his insight into modern mechanical conditions, be