It was scarce a couple of months since he had read a volume of Nietzsche. It had set his brain on fire. It was a revelation—of his own possibilities. Here suddenly was revelation that his instincts had been masterly—that he had no need for shame. With his accustomed industry, he had forthwith mastered the whole of Nietzsche’s published work—our Quogge was a gluttonous reader.
Here was a philosophy that overthrew the whole of the accepted ethics and morals of society—overturned the whole conception of conduct. It made of Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre a splendid hero—whom himself in his inner man even he had more than suspected to be a rather scurvy fellow. His conceit and his egoism jumped with this gospel. He foresaw that the vogue of this aristocratic anarchism must soon spread into England—the decaying hereditary aristocracy would leap at any straw, and here for place of straw was a glittering argosy laden with thrones of gold and purple, and carrying a gaudy diadem for them all. It had begun to thrill the youth of Germany and France. He decided to forestall it in England.
His great chance had come.
There must be no moment’s delay.
That night he had heard a French workman spout it. A workman!
There was indeed no time to be lost.
His book would be in the hands of the reviewers to-day—it would be publicly sold in a fortnight’s time. This new philosophy robbed its publication of all baseness. It would read as if he had had the courage of his outlook upon life.
He rubbed his cold hands together....
He brushed his untidy colourless hair off his forehead and read the clean copy of his essay carefully through—altered a line or two—and folded it with a covering letter to his friend Harry Pollis, the egregious editor of a great London Review, begging urgent publication. There was just time to catch the post. He arose, went out into the early morning, and posted it. Myre’s feet never lagged in his duty to his only god.
When he returned to his room he looked at himself in the great mirror over the low mantel, rubbed his hands, and smiled.