"I didn't mean to add a note," said he in a thick voice. "I meant to pass it off as my own. I have been a dishonest fool."
Levis stirred uneasily.
"We all have to learn lessons."
Stephen was crying like a child.
"Don't, my dear fellow," said Levis.
Stephen lifted his head.
"I promise you that never in my life will I do anything of this kind again. It's nearly killed me. If my father had known—I don't know what he would have felt or done or said. He would have been heart-broken. When I'm tempted to do anything wrong, anything of any kind, I'll think of you. I promise you faithfully!"
Levis smiled.
"Promise yourself, Lanfair!"
Stephen remembered at the end of the week to write his decision to Kinter. He would not need, thank God, to go to Chestnut Ridge and fix his eyes for the rest of his life upon the dirty street and the dismal breaker and the ignorant, unclean women who were so often and so direly in need of waiting upon! He thought of his father with an almost intolerable tenderness of heart. His father had suffered everything, cold and weariness and loneliness and hunger of mind, separation from all that was interesting and profitable, and finally martyrdom itself in a ghastly form. His father was a saint; he would always remember him and love him, but he would not need to follow exactly in his footsteps. He would have a career of which his father would have been unspeakably proud; he would establish principles by which the whole race of eye specialists would be governed; he would have an immensely wide influence, and it would all be his father's doing.