Lidgerwood shook his head.

“You think you have made your case, but you haven’t.  What you say is true enough; I wasn’t afraid of drowning—­didn’t think much about it, either way, I guess.  But what I say is true, also.  There are many kinds of courage, and quite as many kinds of cowardice.  I am a coward of men.”

“Oh, no, you’re not:  you only think you are,” protested the one who thought he knew.  But Lidgerwood would not let that stand.

“I know I am.  Hear me through, and then judge for yourself.  What I am going to tell you I have never told to any living man; but it is your right to hear it....  I have had the symptoms all my life, Stuart.  You have spoken of the schoolboy days:  you may remember how you used to fight my battles for me.  You thought I took the bullying of the bigger boys because I wasn’t strong enough physically to hold up my end.  That wasn’t it:  it was fear, pure and simple.  Are you listening?”

The man in the chair nodded and said, “Go on.”  He was of those to whom fear, the fear of what other men might do to him, was as yet a thing unlearned, and he was trying to attain the point of view of one to whom it seemed very real.

“It followed me up to manhood, and after a time I found myself constantly and consciously deferring to it.  It was easy enough after the habit was formed.  Twentieth-century civilization is decently peaceable, and it isn’t especially difficult to dodge the personal collisions.  I have succeeded in dodging them, for the greater part, paying the price in humiliation and self-abasement as I went along.  God, Stuart, you don’t know what that means!—­the degradation; the hot and cold chills of self-loathing; the sickening misery of having your own soul turn upon you to rend and tear you like a rabid dog!”

“No, I don’t know what it means,” said the other man, moved more than he cared to admit by the abject confession.

“Of course you don’t.  Nobody else can know.  I am alone in my pit of wretchedness, Ford ... as one born out of time; apprehending, as well as you or any one, what is required of a man and a gentleman, and yet unable to answer when my name is called.  I said I had been paying the price; I am paying it here and now.  This is the fourth time I have had to refuse a good offer that carried with it the fighting chance.”

The vice-president’s heavy eyebrows slanted in questioning surprise.

“You knew in advance that you were going to turn me down?  Yet you came a thousand miles to meet me here; and you admit that you have gone the length of looking the ground over.”

Lidgerwood’s smile was mirthless.

“A regular recurring phase of the disease.  It manifests itself in a determination to break away and do or die in the effort to win a little self-respect.  I can’t take the plunge.  I know beforehand that I can’t ... which brings us down to Copah, the present exigency, and the fact that you’ll have to look farther along for your Red Butte Western man-queller.  The blood isn’t in my veins, Stuart.  It was left out in the assembling.”