“Not one, Renny. What concern have we with that past existence of yours?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake drop that nonsense for once in a way. It’s a very real trouble to me, whatever it is to you.”
“Old man, you did and you repented in one day. The account up there must balance.”
“You think it must?”
“We are masters of our acts—not of our impulses. You strike a bell and it clangs. You strike a man and the devil leaps out at his eyes. It’s in the rebound that the thought comes that decides the act. In this case yours was natural to yourself, for you are a good fellow.”
“And so are you, a hundred times over, to take it so. You don’t know the terror it has been to me—that it must be to me still in a measure. The account may balance; but still——”
“Well?”
“The boy—my brother—died.”
“Yes—after you had tried to save him.”
“Duke—Duke, you can’t hold me not to blame.”