"You are up against it hard, David," he said; and he repeated: "I'd give all my old shoes to be able to help you out."
"I know it," said Kent; and then he turned abruptly and went away.
Between nine and ten o'clock the same evening Kent was walking the floor of his room, trying vainly to persuade himself that virtue was its own reward, and wondering if a small dose of chloral hydrate would be defensible under the cruel necessity for sleep. He had about decided in favor of the drug when a tap at the door announced the coming of a bell-boy with a note. It was a message from Portia.
"If you have thrown away your chance definitely, and are willing to take a still more desperate one, come to see me," she wrote; and he went mechanically, as a drowning man catches at a straw, knowing it will not save him.
The house in Alameda Square was dark when he went up the walk; and while he was feeling for the bell-push his summoner called to him out of the electric stencilings of leaf shadows under the broad veranda.
"It is too fine a night to stay indoors," she said. "Come and sit in the hammock while I scold you as you deserve." And when he had taken the hammock: "Now give an account of yourself. Where have you been for the past age or two?"
"Wallowing around in the lower depths of the place that Dante visited," he admitted.
"Don't you think you deserve a manhandling?"
"I suppose so; and if you have it in mind, I shall probably get it. But I may say I'm not especially anxious for a tongue-lashing to-night."
"Poor boy!" she murmured, in mock sympathy. "Does it hurt to be truly good?"