“Well, what is it, then?”
“You are too good for him. You have too quick and clear a perception of what is right, and you are not ready enough to let the lust of knowledge blind your conscience. But, please God, this fellow will find that I am not after all quite the sort of man he takes me to be.”
“My dear Bob, I am just as likely as you are to have dust thrown in the eyes of my conscience, only a different sort of dust. Your turn has come first, that is all. You’ll baffle him and then my turn perhaps won’t come at all. Let us both keep our eyes open to-day. If I can learn how to manage those cars of theirs, and if they give us half a chance, we will make a run for it.”
“Do you forget the light last night?”
“I forget nothing, but we will give them the slip somehow.”
[172] “Well, perhaps we may, for one thing is clear to me, Jack: those fellows once they come among us have to work under the same conditions as we.”
“Did not Dr. Leopold say something of that sort?”
“Yes, and he was right; all that we have seen proves it: everything that they do is done by some chemical or mechanical or other contrivance, they have to get round their work just as we have; they know more of nature than we do, and so they can do more. But if we knew as much we could do as much as they.”
“Well, all that is so much in our favour.”
We were now at the foot of the stairway, and it was within a few minutes of nine. So we shook hands and parted. Jack went up the stairway, and I made my way to the square.