ike a man in a corner--all his wits about him, but
fever in his heart.

"There was the situation, an old one--a girl who dare not marry a poor
man, and a poor man cracking his brains to know where to get money from.
I dare say Bewsher never questioned the rightness of it all--he was too
much in love with the girl, his own training had been too similar. And
Morton, hovering on the outskirts, talked--to weak people the most fatal
doctrine in the world--the doctrine of power, the doctrine that each man
and woman can have just what they want if they will only get out and
seek it. That's true for the big people; for the small it usually spells
death. They falter on methods. They are too afraid of unimportant
details. His insistence had its results even more speedily than he had
hoped. Before long the girl, too, was urging Bewsher on to effort. It
isn't the first time goodness has sent weakness to the devil. Meanwhile
the instigator dropped from his one-time position of tentative lover to
that of adviser in particular. It was just the position that at the time
he most desired.

"Things came to a head on a warm night in April. Bewsher dropped in upon
Morton in his chambers. Very handsome he looked, too, I dare say, in his
evening clothes, with an opera-coat thrown back from his shoulders. I
remember well myself his grand air, with a touch of cavalry swagger
about it. I've no doubt he leaned against the chimney-piece and tapped
his leg with his stick. And the upshot of it was that he wanted money.

"Oh, no! not a loan. It wasn't as bad as that. He had enough to screw
along with himself; although he was frightfully in debt. He wanted a big
sum. An income. To make money, that was. He didn't want to go into
business if he could help it; hadn't any ability that way; hated it. But
perhaps Morton could put him in the way of something? He didn't mind
chances."

"Do you see?" Sir John leaned forward. "And he never realized the
vulgarity of it--that product of five centuries, that English gentleman.
Never realized the vulgarity of demanding of life something for nothing;
of asking from a man as a free gift what that man had sweated for and
starved for all his life; yes, literally, all his life. It was an
illumination, as Morton said, upon that pitiful thing we call 'class.'
He demanded all this as his right, too; demanded power, the one precious
possession. Well, the other man had his code as well, and the first
paragraph in it was