John wondered how far he believed or disbelieved what he had been saying, and whether these dispassionate discussions of what was formally right or wrong took away from a conscience, which could not be very delicate or sensitive, anything of the burden. They set him thinking too, following the career of such a being, trying to understand. Drink--was not in the decalogue, as his visitor had said: and John had seen enough even in his short life to know with what facility, with what innocence of evil meaning, the first step may be taken in that most general, most destructive of all vices--the one which leads to so many other developments, and which involves, as that philosopher had allowed, consequences more terrible, and penalties more prompt and inevitable than any other. John was very strenuous against it, almost bitter, having seen, as everyone has seen, its disastrous effects upon both body and soul. And yet, perhaps it was true what the other had said. Perhaps there were sins which brought no immediate evil consequences, which yet were blacker in the sight of heaven. He felt himself wondering, with an indulgent feeling which was strange to him, how it was that a man who had nothing in him of the criminal air, a man full of thoughtfulness and humorous observation, and a knowledge of the workings of the mind, should have fallen into crime, and should have sunk into those depths and abysses of misery where he had no friend but Joe. A man must have reduced all the motives of human life to their elements, he must have banished all consideration of the outward and visible, all thoughts of the alleviations, the consolations, the comforts and stays of existence before he could have sunk contentedly to the bottom, and cynically, stoically, smilingly, despairingly, made himself believe that his brutal ‘mate’ was as good as any other, being all that remained to him. And what, John asked himself, could remain for a convict whose world for so many years had been limited to the interior of a prison, and who in the course of working out his sentence had lost everything? What remained? One would suppose the poor wretch’s family, somebody who belonged to him, some wife or sister, or daughter. And then came his story: It is Corban--a gift. John felt his own heart bleed at the mere thought of this hopeless, succourless, yet uncomplaining misery. A man who could manage still to smile in the face of all that, to maintain still the attitude of a thinker, of an observer looking on at his own entire destitution with impartial eyes, with that calm and full understanding and humorous despair--the young man shuddered in the midst of his own success and prosperity, and love and hope. Could there be a more complete and absolute contrast? It was so great that his heart seemed to stand still as he contemplated it--a distance as of heaven from hell.