of Russian lunatics who were responsible, among other damage, for the death of three innocent school-children.  I commend his action.  He erred, if at all, on the side of leniency; for we really cannot have a pack of raving wolves at large here.  It is different in Russia.  You can go mad there—­indeed that country, with its vast plains and trackless forests, seems to have been especially created for the purpose of running amok.  But this island is really too small; there are so many glass windows and babies about—­don’t you think so, gentlemen?”

“Nepenthe is certainly a small place, Mr. Keith.”

“Note, now, how differently he treats Miss Wilberforce, who not only never killed three school-children but has never, to the best of my knowledge, injured a living creature.  I am informed on good authority that, after spending a tumultuous night in gaol, she has already regained her liberty.  And this, if I am not mistaken, is the second or third occasion at least on which our judge has behaved in a similar manner towards her.  Once more I commend his action.  Why has Signor Malipizzo set the lady free?  Because, unlike a modern philanthropist, he is aware of the wider issues involved; he acts not with the severity of a fanatic, but with the understanding, the tolerance, the mellow sympathy of a man of the world.  I said that everyone on Nepenthe treated Miss Wilberforce as a pariah.  That was a mistake.  I ought to have allowed for one exception—­our admirable judge!  It strikes me as significant that an official who is bound to her by no ties of blood-relationship or nationality and who enjoys, moreover, a reputation—­however undeserved—­for harshness, should be the one person on Nepenthe to stretch a point in her favour; the one person who extends to her the hand of friendship, whose heart goes out in sympathy with her sad case.  Significant, and not altogether creditable to us, her compatriots.  Now who, I wonder, is the friend of man, the modern Prometheus; you who incarcerate her, or this alien lawyer who sets her free?  To be perfectly frank, I find your attitude contrasts unfavourably with his own.  You are the rigorists, the harsh ones.  He is the humanitarian.  Yes, gentlemen!  In my humble opinion there is not a shadow of a doubt about it.  Signor Malipizzo is the true philanthropist. . . .”

The deputation, wending to the market-place rather hurriedly in order to take their places in the funeral cortege, said to themselves: 

“We ought to have waited.”

Thinking it over as they marched along, the respectable members came to the conclusion that the others, the Hopkins section, were really to blame for the discomfiture of the expedition.  It was they who had insisted with specious arguments upon an interview at this unseasonable hour of the morning; as for themselves, they would gladly have waited for a more suitable occasion.  In undertones, low but venomous, they commented upon the undue haste of Mr. Hopkins and its probable motives.  Later on they understood everything.  Then they called him a thief and a rogue, loudly—­but not to his face.