Brand turned a little away, as if he would conceal the traitor face whose refined beauty this inquisitor was finding even less than skin deep. “Of course,” he said, “I am not as innocent as I was a dozen years ago. But—what you would have, Dr. Annister? A saint? You know you would have to look far to find one among modern young men. I’m no worse than the most of them and much better than some.”
The physician was leaning forward again in his chair, his finger-tips tapping. He paid no attention to his companion’s defense but pursued his own line of thought with an increasing tensity in his voice.
“I have been watching that revealing table of contents in your face grow steadily plainer for the last six months. After each of these long absences, for which you can give no satisfactory explanation, the expression has become, to my eyes, stronger and more significant than before. It forces me to the hypothesis, almost to the conclusion, that you have been spending this time somewhere in the under-world, in some sort of secret debauch.”
Brand wiped the starting beads of sweat from his brow, and said, “I don’t believe you really think me that sort of man, Dr. Annister!”
“Or, possibly,” the physician continued, “that you have become a victim to the alcohol or one of the drug habits. I don’t see the signs of that sort of thing upon you, yet. But—well, if such is your misfortune, I wish, Felix, that you would confide in me. Such habits are curable and even if my other hypothesis, which your physical appearance has forced me to, should be true we might be able to find its cause in some nerve lesion susceptible of remedy. In either case, you know as well as I do, Felix, that there is disaster before you, physical, moral and mental, if you keep on. Make a clean breast of it, and I’ll do my best to help you.”
Again the temptation was assailing the architect’s mind to accept this proffered help and shift his burden to the shoulders of this little but puissant man of healing. Perhaps those tapping fingers could make him whole again. But as he faced avowal of the truth his whole soul drew back. It was impossible—the one thing he could not do. Then came another idea, perhaps a way out.
“Suppose—I do not admit it, but suppose, for the sake of your argument, that your hypothesis should be true. What then—Mildred—what about——”
Dr. Annister sprang to his feet and broke in upon the other’s stumbling words in a voice whose low-toned intensity gave his listener an uncomfortable thrill: “Nothing could make me happier than to see my child the happy wife of the man she loves, if he deserves her love. But I’d rather see her dead than married to a man of gross and unclean life, who has made himself a slave to seasons of secret debauch!”
There was silence for a moment while Brand looked away, unwilling to meet the physician’s eyes. His face was pale and he breathed as if there were a weight upon his chest. Again he was considering open confession. But when he spoke he said: