“After a while, however—­I think it was just before I got into trouble with the police—­I began to see that I was a conceited ass for hating the Major so much.  It was absurd for me, I said, to put on airs, when the difference between him and me was just that he had been brought up in one way and I in another.  I hated the things he did and said, not because they were wrong, but because they were what I called ‘bad form.’  That was really the whole thing.  Then I saw a lot more, and it made me feel miserable.  I used to think that it was rather good of me to be kind to animals and children, but I began to see that it was simply the way I was made:  it wasn’t any effort to me.  I simply ‘saw red’ when I came across cruelty.  And I saw that that was no good.

“Then I began to see that I had done absolutely nothing of any good whatever—­that nothing had really cost me anything; and that the things I was proud of were simply self-will—­my leaving Cambridge, and all the rest.  They were theatrical, or romantic, or egotistical; there was no real sacrifice.  I should have minded much more not doing them.  I began to feel extraordinarily small.

“Then the whole series of things began that simply smashed me up.

“First there was the prison business.  That came about in this way: 

“I had just begun to see that I was all wrong with the Major—­that by giving way to my feelings about him (I don’t mean that I ever showed it, but that was only because I thought it more dignified not to!), I was getting all wrong with regard to both him and myself, and that I must do something that my whole soul hated if it was to be of any use.  Then there came that minute in the barn, when I heard the police were after us, and that there was really no hope of escape.  The particular thing that settled me was Gertie.  I knew, somehow, that I couldn’t let the Major go to prison while she was about.  And then I saw that this was just the very thing to do, and that I couldn’t be proud of it ever, because the whole thing was so mean and second-rate.  Well, I did it, and it did me a lot of good somehow.  I felt really rolled in the dirt, and that little thing in the post-office afterwards rubbed it in.  I saw how chock-full I must be of conceit really to mind that, as I did, and to show off, and talk like a gentleman.

“Then there came the priest who refused to help me.  That made me for a time perfectly furious, because I had always said to myself that Catholics, and especially priests, would always understand.  But before I got to York I saw what an ass I had made of myself.  Of course, the priest was perfectly right (I saw that before I got ten yards away, though I wouldn’t acknowledge it for another five miles).  I was a dirty tramp, and I talked like a brazen fool. (I remember thinking my ‘openness’ to him rather fine and manly!) Well, that made me smaller still.

“Then a sort of despair came on me when the police got me turned out of my work in York.  I know it was only a little thing (though I still think it unfair), but it was like a pebble in your boot when you’re already going lame from something else.