§ 1
From that moment when I insulted old Mrs. Verrall I became
representative, I was a man who stood for all the disinherited of the
world. I had no hope of pride or pleasure left in me, I was raging
rebellion against God and mankind. There were no more vague intentions
swaying me this way and that; I was perfectly clear now upon what I
meant to do. I would make my protest and die.
I would make my protest and die. I was going to kill Nettie—Nettie who
had smiled and promised and given herself to another, and who stood now
for all the conceivable delightfulnesses, the lost imaginations of the
youthful heart, the unattainable joys in life; and Verrall who stood
for all who profited by the incurable injustice of our social order. I
would kill them both. And that being done I would blow my brains out
and see what vengeance followed my blank refusal to live.
So indeed I was resolved. I raged monstrously. And above me, abolishing
the stars, triumphant over the yellow waning moon that followed it
below, the giant meteor towered up towards the zenith.
“Let me only kill!” I cried. “Let me only kill!”
So I shouted in my frenzy. I was in a fever that defied hunger and
fatigue; for a long time I had prowled over the heath towards
Lowchester talking to myself, and now that night had fully come I was
tramping homeward, walking the long seventeen miles without a thought
of rest. And I had eaten nothing since the morning.