It was June when Jerry left, not until midwinter that he returned to Horsham Manor. He was very much changed, older-looking, less assertive, quieter, deeper-toned, more thoughtful. It was as though the physical Jerry that I knew had been subjected to some searching test which had eliminated all superfluities, refined the good metal in him, solidified, unified him. And the physical was symbolic of the spiritual change. I knew that since that night in July the world had tried him in its alembic with its severest tests and that he had emerged safely. He was not joyous but he seemed content. Life was no longer a game. It was a study. Bitter as experience had been, it had made him. Perfect he might not be but sound, sane, wholesome. Jerry had grown to be a man!
But Jerry and I were to have new moments of rapprochement. As the days of his stay at the Manor went on, our personal relations grew closer. He spoke of his letters to Una and of hers to him, but his remarks about her were almost impersonal. It seemed as though some delicacy restrained him, some newly discovered embarrassment which made the thought of seeing her impossible and so he did not go to pay his respects to her. Indeed, he was content just to stay at the Manor with me. It seemed that the bond between us, the old brotherly bond that had existed before Jerry had gone forth into the world, had been renewed. I would have given my life for him and I think he understood. He was still much worried and talked of doing penance. Poor lad! As though he were not doing penance every moment of his days! I know that he wanted to talk, to tell me what had happened, to ask my advice, to have my judgment of him and of her. But something restrained him, perhaps the memory of the girl he had thought Marcia to be, that sublimated being, in whose veins flowed only the ichor of the gods, the goddess with the feet of clay. I told him that she had been at Bar Harbor with Channing Lloyd and that Miss Gore had told me that the two were much together in town.
"Oh, yes," he said slowly, "I know. They're even reported engaged. Perhaps they are."
There was a long silence. We were sitting in the library late one night, a month at least after he had returned, reading and talking by turns.
"She wasn't worthy of you. Jerry," I remarked.
"No, that's not true," he said, a hand shading his eyes from the lamplight. "It would be a poor creature that wouldn't be worthy of such a beast as I. But she tried me, Roger, terribly."
"She tempted you purposely. It was a game. I saw it. But you, poor blind Jerry—"
"Yes, blind and worse than blind, deaf to the appeals of my friends—you and—and Una, who saw where I did not. Marcia had promised to marry me, Roger, to be my wife. Do you understand what such a promise meant to me then? All ideals and clean thoughts. I worshiped her, did not even dare to touch her—until—Oh, I kissed her, Roger. She taught me—many things, little things, innocent they seemed in themselves at the time, but dangerous to my body and to my soul. I knew nothing. I was like a new-born babe. My God! Roger—if only you had told me! If you had told me—"
"I couldn't then, Jerry," I said softly. "It would have been too late. You wouldn't have believed—"
"No," he muttered, "you're right. I wouldn't have believed anything against her at the time or found a real meaning in the truth. She could have done no wrong. Then I saw her kissing that fellow—you remember? I think the change came in me then, my vision. I seemed to see things differently without knowing why. Rage possessed me, animal rage. I saw red. I wanted to kill."