“What was it, then?”
“Just my own miserable pride and Phariseeism—and weakness. There was no excuse; none whatever. I didn’t have to go to the devil merely because my father had chosen to do so. On the other hand, it was up to me to make the name honorable again, if I could. But I didn’t stop to think of that.”
“How curiously things turn out,” she mused. “We lived almost next door to your father in the Whittle Block. I saw him nearly every day; he would be coming in in the morning just about the time I would be going to work. And we—that is, I—knew his—the woman, a little. She was not all bad, Philip; she was human and kind-hearted. When Mummie was sick——”
“I know,” he interposed. “There is no shadow of bitterness in me now, Jean; and I thank God there is none of the old narrowness left—or I hope there isn’t. It is a thousand pities that some of us have to go through hell to find out that there is no such thing as a hopelessly lost soul.”
“Have you found that out, at last?” she asked softly.
“I think so; I hope so. And God knows, the price I am paying for the knowledge is heavy enough.”
“What is the price, Philip?”
He hesitated for the fraction of a second. Then he turned to her impulsively, hungrily, and held out his arms.
“It is the knowledge that I can’t come to you with clean hands and heart and soul, Jean. Isn’t that enough?”
The dark eyes met his gray ones fairly and there were quick-springing tears in them.