Page:The council of seven.djvu/174

 so very much a woman of the world that in the course of the day, as the crown of many attempts, she made some impact upon a reserve that was indeed formidable.

After tea, while she was showing him a rare collection of miniatures, it suddenly occurred to Saul Hartz that through the medium of this woman there might be a hope of getting a line as to the Society's attitude towards himself. Some hint, also, might be forth-*coming of the course it was likely to follow.

Characteristically, he began by asking point blank if she were a member of it. She fenced adroitly, with infinite wit in the use of the foils, but he pressed her hard. He meant to have the truth; and the sense of its importance her dexterity confessed nerved him to tear it from her. Force of reasoning took it captive in the end, not that the penetration of a Solomon was called for in the process.

"And what, pray, do you think you are going to achieve with your mumbo jumbo?" he asked, suddenly spinning the button off his foil. "It is wrong in ethics, it stands outside the law, it is an affront to religion, it is opposed to the deepest instincts of the human race."

Mrs. Carburton said cautiously that the rules of the Society did not permit its case to be argued. But its members sincerely believed that by fearless coöperative action they could do permanent good to the world.

Saul Hartz took leave to doubt it. And to kill a man because one did not happen to agree with his