me with much finesse, but I would undertake to be in the secret and
to do quite as well; the only difference would be in my own peace of
mind, which, of course, doesn't count."

But Raffles wagged away with his most charming and disarming smile;
he was in old clothes, rather tattered and torn, and more than a
little grimy as to the face and hands, but, on the surface,
wonderfully little the worse for his experience. And, as I say,
his smile was the smile of the Raffles I loved best.

"You would have done your damnedest, Bunny! There is no limit to
your heroism; but you forget the human equation in the pluckiest
of the plucky. I couldn't afford to forget it, Bunny; I couldn't
afford to give a point away. Don't talk as though I hadn't trusted
you! I trusted my very life to your loyal tenacity. What do you
suppose would have happened to me if you had let me rip in that
strong-room? Do you think I would ever have crept out and given
myself up? Yes, I'll have a peg for once; the beauty of all. laws
is in the breaking, even of the kind we make unto ourselves."

I had a Sullivan for him, too; and in another minute he was spread
out on my sofa, stretching his cramped limbs with infinite gusto,
a cigarette between his fingers, a yellow bumper at hand on the
chest of his triumph and my tribulation.

"Never mind when it occurred to me, Bunny; as a matter of fact, it
was only the other day, when I had decided to go away for the real
reasons I have already given you. I may have made more of them to
you than I do in my own mind, but at all. events they exist. And I
really did want the telephone and the electric light."