“Yes, I must. I’ve given it to myself, and I’ll keep it, never fear. That—was the last—the very last.”
Kenyon twisted his thin body in his chair and looked up at the junior member keenly, but as he did so his eyes blurred and he saw, as thirty years ago he had seen the figure of this boy’s father standing as Phil Gallatin was standing enmeshed in the toils of Fate, gifted, handsome, lovable—and yet doomed to go, a mental and physical ruin, before his time. The resemblance of Philip Gallatin to his father was striking—the same high forehead, heavy brows and deep-set eyes, the same cleanly cut aquiline nose, and heavy chin. There were lines, too, in Phil Gallatin’s face, lines which had appeared in the last two years which made the resemblance even more assured. And yet to John Kenyon, there seemed to be a difference. There was something of Evelyn Westervelt in him, too, the clean straight line of the jawbone and the firmly modeled lips, thinner than the father’s and more decisive.
“I’m glad of that, Phil,” he said slowly.
“I’m not asking you to believe in me again. Broken faith can’t be repaired by phrases. I don’t want you to believe in me until I’ve made good. I want to come in here again on sufferance, as you took me in six years ago, without a share in the business of the firm that I don’t make myself or for which I don’t give my services. I want to begin at the bottom of the ladder again and climb it rung by rung.”
“Oh, I can’t listen to that. Our partnership agreement——”
“That agreement is canceled. I don’t want a partnership agreement. It’s got to be so. I’ve been thinking hard, Mr. Kenyon. It’s responsibility I need——”
“You’re talking nonsense, Phil. You did more work in the Marvin case than either Hood or myself.”
“Perhaps, but I didn’t win it,” he said quickly.
“The firm did.”
“I can’t agree with you. I’ll come in this office on the conditions I suggest, or I must withdraw. My mind is made up on that. I don’t want to go, and it won’t be easier for me anywhere else. This is where I belong, and this is where I want to fight my battle, if I can do it in my own way without the moral or financial help of any one—of you, least of all.”