"
Without another word the young man crept out of the room, and Bennett
followed him slowly into the street. This gallant criminal whose
capture would have been honourable, had dwindled to a hysterical
foolish boy; and aided by his own strange impulse this boy had ruined
him. The burglary had taken place on his beat; there would be an
inquiry; it did not need that to secure his expulsion from the force.
Once in the street he looked up hopefully to the heavens; but now the
stars seemed unspeakably remote, though as he passed along his beat
his wife and his three little children were walking by his side.
III
Bennett had developed mentally without realising the logical result
of his development until it smote him with calamity. Of his betrayal
of trust as a guardian of property he thought nothing; of the
possibility of poverty for his family he thought a great deal--all
the more that his dreamer's mind was little accustomed to gripping
the practical. It was strange, he thought, that his final declaration
of war against his position should have been a little lacking in
dignity. He had not taken the decisive step through any deep
compassion of utter poverty bravely borne. His had been no more than
trivial pity of a young man's folly; and this was a frail thing on
which to make so great a sacrifice. Yet he regretted nothing. His
task of moral guardian of men and women had become impossible to him,
and sooner or later he must have given it up.
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