your own environment, moved down out of your class; you
come under those who come under you; you have visions of living in the
bronze age, feel as if you went about in an animal's skin, lived in a
cave, and ate out of a trough! Ugh!

MR. X. That's quite rational. Any one who behaves as if he belonged to
the bronze age ought to live in the historic costume.

MR. Y. [Spitefully]. You scoff, you, you who have behaved like a man of
the stone age! And you are allowed to live in the gold age!

MR. X. [Searchingly and sharp]. What do you mean by that last
expression--the gold age?

MR. Y. [Insidiously]. Nothing at all.

MR. X. That's a lie; you are too cowardly to state your whole meaning.

MR. Y. Am I cowardly? Do you think that? I wasn't cowardly when I
dared to show myself in this neighborhood, where I have suffered what I
have.--Do you know what one suffers from most when one sits in there? It
is from the fact that the others are not sitting in there too.

MR. X. What others?

MR. Y. The unpunished.

MR. X. Do you allude to me?

MR. Y. Yes.

MR. X. I haven't committed any crime.

MR. Y. No? Haven't you?

MR. X. No. An accident is not a crime.

MR. Y. So, it's an accident to commit murder?

MR. X. I haven't committal any murder.

MR. Y. So? Isn't it murder to slay a man?

MR. X. No, not always. There is manslaughter, homicide, assault
resulting in death, with the subdivisions, with or without intent.
However, now I am really afraid of you, for you belong in the most
dangerous category of human beings, the stupid.

MR. Y. So you think that I am stupid? Now listen! Do you want me to
prove that I am very shrewd?

MR. X. Let me hear.

MR. Y. Will you admit that I reason shrewdly and logically when I say
this? You met with an accident which might have brought you two years
of hard labor. You have escaped the ignominious penalty altogether. Here
sits a man who also has been the victim of an accident, an unconscious
suggestion, and forced to suffer two years of hard labor. This man can
wipe out the stain he has unwittingly brought upon himself only through
scientific achievement; but for the attainment of this he must have
money--much money, and that immediately. Doesn't it seem to you that
the other man, the unpunished one, would restore the balance of human
relations if he were sentenced to a tolerable fine? Don't you think so?

MR. X. [Quietly]. Yes.

MR. Y. Well, we understand each other.--H'm! Ho