He went back and took the various things he needed.  Then the three men went out together.

CHAPTER XXII

More than an hour had elapsed since the Wanderer and Unorna had finally turned the key upon Israel Kafka, leaving him to his own reflections.  During the first moments he made desperate efforts to get out of the conservatory, throwing himself with all his weight and strength against the doors and thrusting the point of his long knife into the small apertures of the locks.  Then, seeing that every attempt was fruitless, he desisted and sat down, in a state of complete exhaustion.  A reaction began to set in after the furious excitement of the afternoon, and he felt all at once that it would be impossible for him to 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.