he is perfectly familiar; only, the method happens to be criminal.  ’Men who do this kind of thing are constantly being caught and severely punished.  Yes; men of a certain kind; not Robert Hewett.  Robert Hewett is altogether an exceptional being; he is head and shoulders above the men with whom he mixes; he is clever, he is remarkably good-looking.  If anyone in this world, of a truth Robert Hewett may reckon on impunity when he sets his wits against the law.  Why, his arrest and punishment is an altogether inconceivable thing; he never in his life had a charge brought against him.’

Again and again it came back to that.  Every novice in unimpassioned crime has that thought, and the more self-conscious the man, the more impressed with a sense of his own importance, so much the weightier is its effect with him.

We know in what spirit John Hewett regarded rebels against the law.  Do not imagine that any impulse of that nature actuated his son.  Clara alone had inherited her father’s instinct of revolt.  Bob’s temperament was, in a certain measure, that of the artist; he felt without reasoning; he let himself go whither his moods propelled him.  Not a man of evil propensities; entertain no such thought for a moment.  Society produces many a monster, but the mass of those whom, after creating them, it pronounces bad are merely bad from the conventional point of view; they are guilty of weaknesses, not of crimes.  Bob was not incapable of generosity; his marriage had, in fact, implied more of that quality than you in the upper world can at all appreciate.  He neglected his wife, of course, for he had never loved her, and the burden of her support was too great a trial for his selfishness.  Weakness, vanity, a sense that he has not satisfactions proportionate to his desert, a strong temptation—­ here are the data which, in ordinary cases, explain a man’s deliberate attempt to profit by criminality.

In a short time Pennyloaf began to be aware of peculiarities of behaviour in her husband for which she could not account.  Though there appeared no necessity for the step, he insisted on their once more seeking new lodgings, and, before the removal, he destroyed all his medals and moulds.

‘What’s that for, Bob?’ Pennyloaf inquired.

’I’ll tell you, and mind you hold your tongue about it.  Somebody’s been saying as these things might get me into trouble.  Just you be careful not to mention to people that I used to make these kind of things.’

‘But why should it get you into trouble?’

’Mind what I tell you, and don’t ask questions.  You’re always too ready at talking.’