The thrust told. Witherle was silent. Lowndes went on: “Bread isn’t as interesting as champagne, I know, but there is more in it, in the long run. However, that’s neither here nor there—if a man has a right to his champagne. But you haven’t. You are mistaken about your wife. She was all broken up. I don’t pretend to say she was desperately fond of you. I don’t know anything about that. But, anyhow, she had made for herself a kind of life of which you were the centre, and it was all the life she had. You had no right to break it to pieces getting what you wanted. That’s a brutal thing for a man to do. She looked very miserable, when I saw her. You’ve got to go back.”
Witherle turned his head from side to side restlessly, as a sick man turns on the pillow.
“How can I go back?” he cried, keenly protesting. “Don’t you see it’s impossible? I’ve burned my ships.”
“That’s easy enough. You went off in a fit of double consciousness, or temporary insanity, or something like that, and I found you down here. It will be easy enough to reinstate you. I’ll see to that.”
“That would be a lie,” said Witherle, resolutely.
Lowndes stared at him curiously, reflecting upon the fastidiousness with which men pick and choose their offenses against righteousness, embracing one joyously and rejecting another with scorn.
“Yes; so it would. But I have offered to do the lying for you, and you are off your head, you know.”
“How?” demanded Witherle, sharply.
“Any man is off his head who can’t take life as it comes, the bad and the good, and bear up under it. Suicide is insanity. You tried to commit suicide in the cowardliest way, by getting rid of your responsibilities and saving your worthless breath. Old man, it won’t do. You say you’ve learned something about religion and humanity—come back and tell us about it.”
Witherle listened to his sentence in silence. His long lower lip trembled.