The law needed him somewhere he could not reach for a bolt.

So did the truth.

I have been asked whether I felt any hesitation about doing it there, in the church, in front of four hundred people, whether a quieter resolution would not have been kinder, to him or to his mother or even to me.

And the honest answer is that I considered it and rejected it, deliberately, for reasons that were practical before they were anything else.

A man like Jonathan, given warning and privacy, does not surrender; he maneuvers.