.
    Stevie, accustomed to move about disregarded, had got up from the kitchen
table, carrying off his drawing to bed with him. He had reached the parlour door
in time to receive in full the shock of Karl Yundt's eloquent imagery. The sheet
of paper covered with circles dropped out of his fingers, and he remained
staring at the old terrorist, as if rooted suddenly to the spot by his morbid
horror and dread of physical pain. Stevie knew very well that hot iron applied
to one's skin hurt very much. His scared eyes blazed with indignation: it would
hurt terribly. His mouth dropped open.
    Michaelis by staring unwinkingly at the fire had regained that sentiment of
isolation necessary for the continuity of his thought. His optimism had begun to
flow from his lips. He saw Capitalism doomed in its cradle, born with the poison
of the principle of competition in its system. The great capitalists devouring
the little capitalists, concentrating the power and the tools of production in
great masses, perfecting industrial processes, and in the madness of
self-aggrandizement only preparing, organizing, enriching, making ready the
lawful inheritance of the suffering proletariat. Michaelis pronounced the great
word Patience - and his clear blue glance, raised to the low ceiling of Mr.
Verloc's parlour, had a character of seraphic trustfulness. In the doorway
Stevie, calmed, seemed sunk in hebetude.
    Comrade Ossipon's face twitched with exasperation.
    »Then it's no use doing anything - no use whatever.«
    »I don't say that,« protested Michaelis, gently. His vision of truth had
grown so intense that the sound of a strange voice failed to rout it this time.
He continued to look down at the red coals. Preparation for the future was
necessary, and he was willing to admit that the great change would perhaps come
in the upheaval of a revolution. But he argued that revolutionary propaganda was
a delicate work of high conscience. It was the education of the masters of the
world. It should be as careful as the education given to kings. He would have it
advance its tenets cautiously, even timidly, in our ignorance of the effect that
may be produced by any given economic change upon the happiness, the morals, the
intellect, the history of mankind. For history is made with tools, not with
ideas; and everything is changed by economic conditions - art, philosophy, love,
virtue - truth itself!
    The coals in the grate settled down with a slight crash; and Michaelis, the
hermit of visions in the desert of a penitentiary, got
