have no excuse to
be anything but very good. There might be something worth pursuing in
that thought. A child might consider itself chained more inseverably
than one who apparently possesses the perfectiveness of free-will. Had
civilization complicated too unreasonably the problem of evil? It was a
commonplace to suppose that the sense of moral responsibility increased
with the opportunity of development, and yet after all was not the
reverse true?

"Why should it be easier to behave here than in Leppard Street?" Michael
asked. "I do wish you could understand it's really so much more
difficult. I can't distinguish what is wrong from what is right nearly
so well as you can."

"Well, in my experience, and my experience has done its bit I can tell
you," said Barnes in self-satisfied parenthesis. "In my experience most
of the difficulties in this world come from wanting something we haven't
got. I don't care what it is--a woman or a drink or a new suit of
clothes. Money'll buy any of them. Give me ten pounds a week, and I
could be a bloody angel."

"Supposing I offered you half as much for three months," suggested
Michael. "Do you think you'd find life any easier while it lasted?"

"Well, don't be silly," said Barnes. "Of course I should. If you'd
walked home every night with your eyes on the gutter in case anybody had
dropped a threepenny bit, you'd think it was easier. It's not a bit of
good your running me down, Fane. If you were me, you'd be just the same.
Those monks at the Abbey used to jaw about holy poverty. The man who
first said that ought to be walking about hell with donkey's ears on his
nob. What's it done for me? I ask you. Why, it's made me so that I'd
steal a farthing from one blind man to palm it off as half-a-quid on
another."

"Tell me about Leppard Street," said Michael, laughing. "What's it
like?"

"Well, you go and punch a few holes in a cheese rind. That's what it
looks like. And then go and think yourself a rat who's lost all his
teeth, and you've got what it feels like to be living in it."

"Supposing I said I'd like to try?" asked Michael. "What would you
think?"

"Think? I shouldn't think two seconds. I should know you were having a
game. What good's Leppard Street to you, when you can sit here bouncing
up and down all day on cushions?"

"Experience," said Michael.

"Oh, rats! Nothing's experience that you haven't had to do."

"Well, I'll give you five pounds a week," Michael offer