"I have tried starving," replied the Duke; "I went for two days hungry in the Bjelowjesha forest; on the third day I begged a wood chopper for his dinner and got it. I broke my leg once trying to follow a wounded beast into one of those inaccessible peaks of the Pusiko. I crawled all that night down the mountain to the hut of a Cossack, and there I begged him, literally begged him for his horse. I had nothing; I was a dirty mass of blood and caked earth; it was pure primal beggary. I got the horse. The heart in every man, when one finally reaches to it, is right. In his way, at the bottom of him, one is always pleased to help. The pride, locking the tongue of the unfortunate, is false."
"Doubtless," replied the Marchesa, "in a state of nature, such a thing is easy. But I do not mean that. I mean the humiliation, the distress, of that one forced by circumstance to appeal to an equal or a superior for aid—perhaps to a proud, arrogant, dominating person in authority."
"I have done that, too," replied the Duke, "and I still live. Once in India I came upon a French explorer of a helpless, academic type. He had come into the East to dig up a buried city, and the English Resident of the native state would not permit him to go on. He had put his whole fortune into the preparation for the work, and I found him in despair. I went to the Resident, a person of no breeding, who endeavored, like all those of that order, to make up for this deficiency with insolence. I was ordered to wait on the person's leisure, to explain in detail the explorer's plan, literally to petition the creature. It was not pleasant, but in the end I got it; and I rather believe that this Resident was not, at bottom, the worst sort, after one got to the real man under his insolence."
The Marchesa recalled vaguely some mention of this incident in a continental paper at the time.
"But," she said, "that was aid asked for another. That is easy. It is aid asked for oneself that is crucifixion."
"If," replied the Duke, "any man had a thing which I desperately needed, I should have the courage to ask him for it."
A tinge of color flowed up into the woman's face.
"I thought that, too," she said, "until I came into your house this morning."
The Duke leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table.
"Have I acted then, so much like that English Resident?" he said. The voice was low, but wholly open and sincere.