Raymond had been leaning a little forward over the back of the chair, touching it lightly. She straightened herself when Ember used her name, and looked at him with a sort of grave displeasure. He laughed a little.
“Do you begin to understand?” he said.
“I don’t think, Jeffrey, that I want to understand,” said Lady Heritage.
“How like a woman,” said Mr. Ember. “Here is what you cried out for. Here is opportunity, power, the greatest adventure that ever has been or ever will be, and you are afraid to face it. I offer you the throne of the world—and you don’t wish to understand.”
The extreme quiet of his voice was in sharp contradiction to the flamboyant words. Raymond looked at him in some anxiety.
“You’re not well,” she began, and then stopped before the sarcasm of his glance.
“I’m not mad,” he said. “This is a business proposition. You’ve had poetry, but I can give you prose if you prefer it. I have discovered something—I won’t at this moment go into details—which enables me to smash up civilisation as you’d smash a rotten egg. Every city, every town of the so-called civilised world is accounted for, divided amongst my agents. They only await my signal. Those alone whom we mark for survival will survive, the rest are eliminated. Remains a world at our disposal to recreate. In that world I am supreme—and you. Is that plain enough?”
Her face showed deep distress and concern.
“Jeffrey, indeed you’re not well,” she repeated.
“Am I not?”