"You—you tried to kill yourself?" she cried in amazement.
"Yes," he answered unflinchingly, "I tried to quit. There were many things I wanted—cheap, trivial things, and at the time I did n't see my course clear to getting them in any other way. The other things—the things worth while were around me all the time, but I could n't see them."
He paused. She drew away from him.
"So you see I did not do bravely. I wanted you to know this from the first, but there didn't seem to be any way. I did n't want to stand before you as a liar—as a hypocrite, and yet I did n't want to balk myself in the little good I found myself able to do. That silence was part of the penalty. I left you yesterday without telling, for the same reason. That and one other: because I did n't want you to think me a coward when death might cut off all opportunity for ever proving otherwise."
Again he paused, hoping against a dead hope. But she stood there, cringing away from him, her frightened lips dumb.
"That is all," he concluded. "Now I will go. But don't you see that I had to intrude long enough to tell you this? I stand absolutely honest before you. There isn't a lie in me. Now I am going to work."
He made an odd looking picture as he stood there. Haggard, hot-eyed, with a touch of color above his unshaven cheeks, he was like a victorious general at the end of a hard week's campaign.
He turned away from her and went out of the room. At the foot of the stairs he passed in silence Arsdale and the nurse. He turned back.
"Sandy! Sandy! Where are you?"
The dog came scrambling over the smooth floor with a joyous yelp. He picked him up and passing out the door went down the street. The few remaining dollars he had left burned in his pocket. He tossed them into the first sewer. He was now free—free to begin clean handed.