intentions. He began to reconsider the details of Howard’s behaviour, sinister glances, inexplicable hesitations. Then, for a time, his mind circled about the idea of escaping from these rooms; but whither could he escape into this vast, crowded world? He would be worse off than a Saxon yeoman suddenly dropped
into nineteenth century London. And besides, how could anyone escape from these rooms?
“How can it benefit anyone if harm should happen to me?”
He thought of the tumult, the great social trouble of which he was so unaccountably the axis. A text, irrelevant enough, and yet curiously insistent, came floating up out of the darkness of his memory. This also a Council had said:
“It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people.”
CHAPTER VIII. — THE ROOF SPACES
As the fa
