o make another
step or raise his arm to strike. A man less sound originally in bodily
constitution would have broken down sooner, and it was a proof of Israel
Kafka's extraordinary vigour and energy that he did not lose his senses
in a delirious fever at the moment when he felt that his strength could
bear no further strain.

But his thoughts, such as they were, did not lack clearness. He saw that
his opportunity was gone, and he began to think of the future, wondering
what would take place next. Assuredly when he had come to Unorna's house
with the fixed determination to take her life, the last thing that
he had expected had been to be taken prisoner and left to his own
meditations. It was clear that the Wanderer's warning had been conveyed
without loss of time and had saved Unorna from her immediate fate.
Nevertheless, he did not regret having given her the opportunity of
defending herself. He had not meant that there should be any secret
about the deed, for he was ready to sacrifice his own life in executing
it.

Yet he was not altogether brave. He had neither Unorna's innate
indifference to physical danger, nor the Wanderer's calm superiority to
fear. He would not have made a good soldier, and he could not have faced
another man's pistol at fifteen paces without experiencing a mental and
bodily commotion not unlike terror, which he might or might not have
concealed from others, but which would in any case have been painfully
apparent to himself.

It is a noticeable fact in human nature that a man of even ordinary
courage will at any time, when under excitement, risk his life rather
than his happiness. Moreover, an immense number of individuals,
naturally far from brave, destroy their own lives yearly in the moment
when all chances of happiness are temporarily eclipsed. The inference
seems to be that mankind, on the whole, values happiness more highly
than life. The proportion of suicides from so-called "honourable
motives" is small as compared with the many committed out of despair.

Israel Kafka's case was by no means a rare one. The fact of having been
made to play a part which to him seemed at once blasphemous and ignoble
had indeed turned the scale, but was not the motive. In all things,
the final touch which destroys the balance is commonly mistaken for the
force which has originally produced a state of unstable equilibrium,
whereas there is very often no connection between the one and the other.
The Morav