Is it
not so? Will you not speak? Answer!"
"I prefer not to," he replied in a flute-like tone. It seemed to me
that while I had been addressing him, he carefully revolved every
statement that I made; fully comprehended the meaning; could not gainsay
the irresistible conclusions; but, at the same time, some paramount
consideration prevailed with him to reply as he did.
"You are decided, then, not to comply with my request--a request made
according to common usage and common sense?"
He briefly gave me to understand that on that point my judgment was
sound. Yes: his decision was irreversible.
It is not seldom the case that when a man is browbeaten in some
unprecedented and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in
his own plainest faith. He begins, as it were, vaguely to surmise that,
wonderful as it may be, all the justice and all the reason is on the
other side. Accordingly, if any disinterested persons are present, he
turns to them for some reinforcement for his own faltering mind.
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