I watched him out of the store. The Grand Army must be annoying the mighty Confederacy. Tyss ought to know about the agent’s interest. And I knew I would be unable to tell him. “Suppose,” I asked Enfandin the next day, “suppose one were placed in the position of being an involuntary assistant in a—to a....” I was at a loss for words to describe the situation without being incriminatingly specific. I could not tell him about Tolliburr and my clear duty to let Tyss know of the colonel’s espionage without revealing Tyss’s connection with the Grand Army and thus uncovering my deceit in not warning Enfandin earlier. Whatever I said or failed to say, I was somehow culpable. He waited patiently while I groped, trying to formulate a question which was no longer a question. “You can’t do evil that good may come of it,” I burst out at last. “Quite so. And then?” “Well.... That might mean eventually giving up all action entirely, since we can never be sure even the most innocent act may not have bad consequences.” He nodded. “It might. The Manichaeans thought it did; they believed good and evil balanced and man was created in the image of Satan. But certainly there is a vast difference between this inhuman dogma and refusing to do consciously wicked deeds.” “Maybe,” I said dubiously. He looked at me speculatively. “A man is drowning in the river. I have a rope. If I throw him the rope he may not only climb to safety but take it from me and use it to garrote some honest citizen. Shall I therefore let him drown because I must not do good lest evil come of it?” “But sometimes they are so mixed up it is impossible to disentangle them.” “Impossible? Or very difficult?” “Um.... I don’t know.” “Are you not perhaps putting the problem too abstractly? Is not perhaps your situation—your hypothetical situation—one of being accessory to wrong rather than facing an alternative which means personal unhappiness?” Again I struggled for noncommittal words. He had formulated my dilemma about the Grand Army so far as it connected with giving up my place in the bookstore or telling him of Tyss’s bias. Yet not entirely. And why could I not let Tyss know of Colonel Tolliburr’s visit, which it was certainly my duty to do? Was this overscrupulousness only a means of avoiding any unpleasantness? “Yes,” I muttered at last. “It would be very nice if there were no drawbacks ever attached to the virtuous choice. Then the only ones who would elect to do wrong would be those of twisted minds, the perverse, the insane. Who would prefer the devious course if the straight one were just as easy? No, no, my dear Hodge; one cannot escape the responsibility for his choice simply because the other way means inconvenience or hardships or tribulation.” “Must we always act, whether we are sure of the outcome of our action or not?” “Not acting is also action; can we always be sure of the outcome of refusing to act?”