"You know perfectly well that I'm not built to betray the man who gives me shelter."
"Oh, I'm not sheltering you for love!"
"You have some purpose, of course. I understand that. But you're wasting time."
"Well, I'll risk it… I know well enough you're not a man easily won to an abstract hatred… But a personal hatred very often serves as good a turn… Everything is grist to my mill."
"A personal hatred?" echoed Fred.
Storch blew out the light.
"You're duller than I thought," he called through the gloom.
Fred turned his face away and tried to sleep.
The next day he decided to crawl out of bed and begin to win back his strength. He couldn't lie there forever sharing Storch's roof and crust. But the effort left him exhausted and he was soon glad to fling himself back upon the couch.
Each succeeding day he felt a little stronger, until the time came when he was able to drag himself to the open door and sit in the sunshine. He had never thought much about sunshine in the old days. A fine day had been something to be remarked, but scarcely hoarded. With the steam radiator working, it had not mattered so much whether the sun shone or not… He remembered the first time that a real sense of the sun's beauty had struck him—on that morning which now seemed so remote—when he had risen weakly from his cot at the detention hospital and made ready for exile at Fairview. Less than a year ago! How many things had assumed new values since then! Now, he could exploit every sunbeam to its minutest warmth, he could wring sustenance from a handful of crumbs, he knew what a cup of cold water meant. He was on speaking terms with hunger, he had been comrade to madness, he had looked upon sudden death, he was an outcast and, in a sense, a criminal. He felt that he could almost say with Hilmer: