Ever since Syme had risen Gregory had sat staring at him, his face
idiotic with astonishment. Now in the pause his lips of clay
parted, and he said, with an automatic and lifeless distinctness--

"You damnable hypocrite!"

Syme looked straight into those frightful eyes with his own pale
blue ones, and said with dignity--

"Comrade Gregory accuses me of hypocrisy. He knows as well as I do
that I am keeping all my engagements and doing nothing but my duty.
I do not mince words. I do not pretend to. I say that Comrade
Gregory is unfit to be Thursday for all his amiable qualities. He
is unfit to be Thursday because of his amiable qualities. We do not
want the Supreme Council of Anarchy infected with a maudlin mercy
(hear, hear). This is no time for ceremonial politeness, neither is
it a time for ceremonial modesty. I set myself against Comrade
Gregory as I would set myself against all the Governments of
Europe, because the anarchist who has given himself to anarchy has
forgotten modesty as much as he has forgotten pride (cheers). I am
not a man at all. I am a cause (renewed cheers). I set myself
against Comrade Gregory as impersonally and as calmly as I should
choose one pistol rather than another out of that rack upon the
wall; and I say that rather than have Gregory and his
milk-and-water methods on the Supreme Council, I would offer myself
for election--"

His sentence was drowned in a deafening cataract of applause. The
faces, that had grown fiercer and fiercer with approval as his
tirade grew more and more uncompromising, were now distorted with