Donaldson frowned.
"You deserve to, but you oughtn't," he said.
"Oh, I deserve it all right. I deserve it—and more!"
"Yes, you do. But that does n't help any."
Arsdale groaned.
"There is n't any help. I 've made a beastly mess out of my life, out of myself."
"I wish I could disagree, but I can't," answered Donaldson.
He walked up and down a moment before the fellow studying him. He was worried and perplexed. The task before him was an unpleasant one. He had to overcome a natural repugnance to interference in the life of another. Under ordinary circumstances he would have watched Arsdale go to his doom with a feeling of nothing but indifference. In his own passion for individual liberty he neither demanded nor accepted sympathy for personal misfortunes or mistakes, and in turn was loath to trespass either upon the rights or duties of another, but his own life, through the medium of the boy's sister, was so inextricably entangled with this other that now he recognized the inevitability of such interference. On his success or failure to arouse Arsdale largely depended the happiness of the girl.
"No," he reflected aloud, "the question is n't how much punishment you deserve, for the pain you suffer personally does n't, unfortunately, remedy matters in the slightest. It wouldn't do you any good for me to kick you about the room or I 'd do it. It would n't do you any good for me to turn you over to the police or I 'd do that. You 're hard to get hold of because there's so little left of you."
Arsdale made no reply. He remained motionless.