"I wonder what will
happen to you, Lewie. Life is serious enough without inventing a
crotchety virtue to make it miserable."
"Can't you understand me, Tommy? It isn't that I'm a cad, it's that I
am a coward. I couldn't be a cad supposing I tried. These things are a
matter chiefly of blood and bone, and I am not made that way. But God
help me! I am a coward. I can't fight worth twopence. Look at my
performance a fortnight ago. The ordinary gardener's boy can beat me at
making love. I am full of generous impulses and sentiments, but what's
the use of them? Everything grows cold and I am a dumb icicle when it
comes to action. I knew all this before, but I thought I had kept my
bodily courage. I've had a good enough training, and I used to have
pluck."
"But you don't mean to tell me that it was funk that kept you out of the
pool to-day?" cried the impatient Wratislaw.
"How do I know that it wasn't?" came the wretched answer.
Wratislaw turned on his heel and made to go back.
"You're an infernal idiot, Lewie, and an infernal child. Thank heaven!
your friends know you better than you know yourself."
The next morning it was a different man who came down to breakfast. He
had lost his haggard air, and seemed to have forgotten the night's
episode.
"Was I very rude to everybody last night?" he asked. "I have a vague
recollection of playing the fool.
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