But though he was dazed and shocked at his own matter-of-course acceptance of the note, he still did not own to guilt at that point.... It was something that happened to him, not something that he had done. He had not yet begun to figure the special terror that this involved. But, if not guilty, need he seek punishment? And for the silence which was deliberate and cowardly in the drawing-room just now? “Won’t it do,” Hal wondered, for the first time in his existence of straightforward rights and wrongs, trying to hold the scales on his own responsibility, doing question and answer both, worrying over cause and effect, balancing and fine adjustment, “Won’t it do if I only leave myself that five bob to plank down first on the subscription list?” By promising Bunny that fifteen shillings, he had doled himself out quite a fair prospect of suffering. Five shillings from the magnificent Head of the School, and next on the list, thirty shillings, say, from that dud Parkinson. The ignominy would have to be endured with shut teeth. “Won’t that be enough?” Hal pleaded with himself, as he thought, enthroned as judge.... Never again, with Whoever--Whatever--had tripped him up with vision and swift miracle, that morning; had cheated him for ever of self-confidence, and given him bewilderment in its stead.... Ought a fellow’s punishment--beastly word--be finely tempered to what he had not felt wrong when he did it? or ought it to be for how wrong it looked after it was done? Hal, in his first conflict with ethics, was about as happy as a bear in boxing-gloves, putting together the minute works of a watch. His only mitigation was that he did not recognize “the whole foul mess” as ethics, or he would have regarded his entanglement with any process so priggish, as his final humiliation. “I’ve had enough of this----” and with a sigh of relief at a vigorous decision, he strode determinedly in search of Aunt Lavvy. But the luncheon-gong was being sounded as he came up the few perforated iron steps that led back from the garden into the drawing-room. And Hal had to submit to another hour with a one-pound treasury note that did not belong to him hidden in his pocket, accumulating reproach with every wasted moment. By now he was violently anxious to deliver it up to Aunt Lavvy, albeit not quite sure what, even then, and after a full confession, might yet remain behind with him. Directly after lunch, he followed her to her room: “May I come in, Aunt Lavvy?” “Of course, my dear boy.” She sank into one of her round chintz armchairs with their dumpy old-rose and silver-grey cushions, and smiled up at Hal, standing with his hands in his pockets--no, with one hand in one pocket--in front of the empty fireplace.