rself free. In a nobler warfare, such an action would have been
rewarded with a cross of honour, as it truly deserved. It is true, as
well, that you were not so intimately connected with the main question at
stake, as I was, since it was I who was suspected of being in possession
of unlawfully gotten goods. You were consequently, I think, at liberty to
take your freedom if you could get it, without consulting your conscience
further. Now my position was, and is, very different. I do not speak of
any personal prejudice against the mere act of running away, considered as
an immediate means of escape from disagreeable circumstances, with the
hope of ultimate immunity from all unpleasant consequences. That is a
matter of early education."

"I had very little early education," observed Dumnoff. "And none at all
afterwards."

"My friend, it is not for you and me to enter into the history of our
misfortunes. We have met in the vat of poverty to be seethed alike in the
brew of unhappiness. We have sat at the same daily labour, we have shared
often the same fare, but there is that in each of us which we can keep
sacred from the contamination of confidence, and which will withstand even
the thrusts of poverty. I mean our individual selves, the better part of
us, the nobler element which has suffered, as distinguished from the
grosser, which may yet enjoy. But I am wandering a little. I am afraid I
sometimes do. I return to the point. For me to take advantage of your
generous attempt to free me would have been to act as though I had a moral
cause for flight. In other words, it would have been to acknowledge that I
had committed some dishonourable action."

"It seems to me that to get away would have been the best way out of it.
They would not have caught you if you had trusted to me, and if they did
not catch you they could not prove anything against you."

"The suspicion would have remained, and the disgrace in my own eyes,"
answered the Count. "The question of physical fear is very different. I
have been told that it depends upon the nerves and the action of the
heart, and that courage is greatly increased by the presence of
nourishment in the stomach. The same cannot be said of moral bravery,
which proceeds more from the fear of seeming contemptible in our own eyes
than from the wish to seem honourable in the estimation of others."

"I daresay," said Dumnoff, who was growing sleepy and who understood very
little of his comp