Page:The council of seven.djvu/270

 *ning to make all the world see, as a Bright or a Gladstone would have done, to what a pass the nation had been brought. He had underrated the moral fiber of his countrymen. In a moment of blindness he had allowed himself to despair of the State—of that State in which he so fully believed that he was ready to make almost any sacrifice, in order to serve it.

What should he do? Saul Hartz was still Saul Hartz, a being of volcanic will. And that will had now become a creative force which seemed to transcend that of men. In the mind of John Endor it was a symbol. Here for one wrought upon by the fires of imagination was the embodiment of the spirit that denied. But if there was a God in the world, and the first weeks of marriage, a time of rare happiness and sanity, had taught him that surely there must be, He must be left to deal with this monster in His own way, at His own time. If Endor himself and the secret society to which he was pledged usurped terrible functions which his conscience could never approve, they, too, must sink to the level of the thing they sought to destroy.

John Endor knew now that he was on the horns of an inescapable dilemma. The body of fanatics and visionaries whose will he had sworn to do would not be in the least likely to release him from his vows. It was not the way of such a camarilla. Once a member, always a member. Before God he would have to assume full responsibility for its acts. And that knowledge was a viper in his breast. How could he