"Ah, you were unhappy!" Her face softened, telling of a swift, spontaneous sympathy.
"I was nigh starving. I never saw a newspaper unless by chance; my pennies were too precious."
"My poor friend!" Her eyes gleamed as if tears were about to come.
"I played the game up to a certain point with all my strength, but everything went against me from every quarter. I know there are men that would have risen triumphant above all these evils and difficulties. But I was not one of those men. I was beaten—smashed—utterly and hopelessly. I had not the smallest reserve of power to carry on the fight. I lived cut off from the world like a man in a tomb. I am ashamed to think that I kept myself alive——"
"No, no," she interrupted, shivering. "I can't bear it."
"I am ashamed that I did not die," he persisted. "It is the truth. It is the first time I say it either to myself or to another. In order to live I stepped below myself."
She covered her face with her hands. "I know you are misjudging. You are harsh with yourself. I hold to my faith in you."
"I lived on the earnings of my sister, who stinted herself in food and went shabbily clad that she might foster my work. Yet, for terrible months and months, I deceived her. I did no work. My will was dead. As a man I seemed to collapse physically and morally."
"You were not responsible. There is a limit to human endurance. You needed a delicious rest in some blue sunny place, in one of those earthly paradises where the orange-trees are golden in the sun. Your sister's love consecrated her sacrifice. She saved you for a great future. Her reward is yet to come."
"You see everything in so sweet a light; I can only hope that the issue will be as you say. It is on my future work that I have staked the redemption of my manhood in my own eyes. My work! That is where my real heart lies. Outside of that my life will be a mere appearance."