"Have I any?—I mean outside of you and my mother?" he asked in a low voice, but subdued eagerness was audible in it.
"Have you any? Why, man, a friend is a friend for life—and beyond. Who was it put it thus: 'Said one: I would go up to the gates of hell with a friend.—Said the other: I would go in.' That last is the kind you have here in Flamsted, Champney."
The other turned away his face that the firelight might not betray him.
"It's too much—it's too much; I don't deserve it."
"Champney, when you decided of your own accord to expiate in the manner you have through these six years, do you think your friends—and others—didn't recognize your manhood? And didn't you resolve at that time to 'put aside' those things that were behind you once and forever?—clear your life of the clogging part?"
"Yes,—but others won't—"
"Never mind others—you are working out your own salvation."
"But it's going to be harder than I thought—I find I am beginning to dread to meet people—everything is so changed. It's going to be harder than I realized to carry out that resolution. The Past won't down—everything is so changed—everything—"
Father Honoré rose to turn on the electric lights. He did not take his seat again, but stood on the hearth, back to the fire, his hands clasped behind him. The clear light from the shaded bulbs shone full upon the face of the man before him, and the priest, searching that face to read its record, saw set upon it, and his heart contracted at the sight, the indelible seal of six years of penal servitude. The close-cut hair was gray; the brow was marked by two horizontal furrows; the cheeks were deeply lined; and the broad shoulders—they were bent. Formerly he stood before the priest with level eyes, now he was shorter by an inch of the six feet that were once his. He noticed the hands—the hands of the day-laborer.
He managed to reply to Champney's last remark without betraying the emotion that threatened to master him.