"If there was, now would be my time, wouldn't it?"
They stood so for a moment, hands gripped, eyes pointed steadily into eyes.
"Yes, I believe you!" Rogers breathed, and sank into a chair and let his head fall into his hand. David also sat down.
Presently Rogers looked up.
"I guess I was very harsh," he said weakly. "But you can't guess what I was going through. It was the moment I had feared for ten years. It seemed that the world had fallen from beneath me."
"I understand," said David.
"But you cannot understand the ten years of fear, of suspense—of fear and suspense that walk with you, eat with you, sleep with you."
He sat looking back into the years. After a space, the hunger for sympathy, the instinct to speak his decade of repressed bitterness, prompted him on.
"I was one of those thousands and thousands that never had a chance when boys. I had no very clear idea between right and wrong; there was no one to show me the difference. I was full of life and energy, and I had brains. I could easily have been turned into the right way—but there was no one. So I turned into the wrong. About that part of my life Halpin told you."
"He said you were the cleverest man in your line."