'Can't you? It's as natural as anything to me now. But call me Jack, will you? I wish you would. Do you know, when I heard the old name the night before last, I—I—but there, I can't tell you. It seemed to open a new world to me,—all my boyhood came back, all those things which made life wonderful. Yes, that's it, call me Jack.'
'Well, then, Jack,' I said, 'I have been wondering. Are your experiences at that Y.M.C.A. hut real to you now?'
'Of course,' he replied quietly; 'why, they are not a matter of memory, you know; they went down to the very depths of life.'
'And the convictions which were the result of those experiences? Do you feel as you did about drink and that sort of thing?'
'Exactly.'
'And you will stand by what you said in London the other night?'
'Of course,—why shouldn't I?'
'I was only wondering. Do you know, Jack,—you will forgive me for saying so, I am sure, but you present a kind of problem to me.'
'Do I?' and he laughed merrily as he spoke. 'You are wondering whether my early associations, now that they have come back to me, are stronger than what I have experienced since? Not a bit of it. I did a good deal of thinking last night, after I had got to bed. You see, I tried to work things out, and—and—it is all very wonderful, you know. I wasn't a bad chap in the old days, by no means a pattern young man, but on the whole I went straight,—I wasn't immoral, but I had no religion,—I never thought about it. I had a good house-master when I went to school, and under him I imbibed a sort of code of honour. It didn't amount to very much, and yet it did, for he taught me to be an English gentleman. I was always truthful, and tried to do the straight thing. You know the kind of thing a chap picks up at a big public school. But that night, at the Y.M.C.A. hut, I got down deep. No, no,—early associations can't destroy that.'
'And you still hold to what you said at the meeting?'