"
"Yes--the blood--the blood!" the Duchess shuddered. "He would pour
it forth without a qualm."
Coombe touched the map first at one point and then at another.
"See!" he said again, and this time savagely. "This empire flattered
and entangled by cunning, this country irritated, this deceived,
this drawn into argument, this and this and this treated with
professed friendship, these tricked and juggled with--And then, when
his plans are ripe and he is made drunk with belief in himself--just
one sodden insult or monstrous breach of faith, which all humanity
must leap to resent--And there is our World Revolution."
The Duchess sat upright in her chair.
"Why did you let your youth pass?" she said. "If you had begun
early enough, you could hare made the country listen to you. Why
did you do it?"
"For the same reason that all selfish grief and pleasure and
indifference let the world go by. And I am not sure they would have
listened. I speak freely enough now in some quarters. They listen,
but they do nothing. There is a warning in the fact that, as he
has seen his youth leave him without giving him his opportunity,
he has been a disappointed man inflamed and made desperate. At the
outset, he felt that he must provide the world with some fiction
of excuse. As his obsession and arrogance have swollen, he sees
himself and his ambition as reason enough.
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