"Yes. The man who allows his friend to help him in any crisis of his own making should at least be able to give bond for his good behavior. I can't do that now. I wouldn't trust myself to go across the street. I know my own potentiality for evil too well."
"But potentiality isn't evil," she protested. "It's only the power to do things, good or bad. And if one have that there is always hope."
"Not for me," he said shortly. "I have sinned against grace."
"Who hasn't?" Constance rejoined. "But grace doesn't die because it's sinned against."
He smiled again at that. "I think my particular allotment of grace is dead beyond the hope of resurrection."
"How can that be?"
He put his back to the window so that he had not to look in her eyes.
"Grace for most men takes the form of an ideal. So long as the condition to be attained is ahead there is hope, but when one has turned his back upon it"—
Indirection fences badly with open-eyed sincerity, and he did not finish. But the door was open now, and Constance meant to do her whole duty.