Then:
"And you—you went out, as you thought, to meet your own death?"
"Yes—and I wish to God I'd met it," said Anstice with an uncontrollable outburst of bitterness. "I endured the shame, the horror of it all in vain. You know what happened ... how just as the men were about to fire the rescuers burst into the courtyard.... My God, why were they so late! Or, being late, why did they come at all!"
Cheniston's blue eyes, which had been full of a natural human anguish, grew suddenly hard.
"You are not particularly grateful to your rescuers," he said. "Yet if they had been a few minutes later, you too would have been beyond their help."
Anstice was quick to notice the renewed hostility in the young man's tone.
"Just so." His manner, too, had changed. "But can you expect me to feel a very vivid gratitude to the men who restored my life to me, seeing with what memories that life must always be haunted?"
"Need you endure the haunting of those memories?"
The question, spoken quietly, yet with an obvious significance, took Anstice aback. For a moment he frowned, his dazed mind fumbling after the speaker's meaning.
"Need I?" Suddenly he knew what Cheniston had meant to imply. "Ah—you mean a man may always determine the length of his days?"