"But you are winning now." The color swept into her pale cheeks. "Cousin Patty told me."
"Yes. You showed me the way—I have tried to follow it."
"Oh, how ignorant I was," she cried, tempestuously, "when I talked to you of life. I thought I knew everything."
"You knew enough to help me. If I can help you a little now it will be only a fair exchange."
It helped her merely to have him there. "You spoke of Barry's still fighting and winning. Do you think that one goes on fighting?"
"Why not? It would seem only just that he should conquer. There are men who are not tempted, whose goodness is negative. Character is made by resistance against evil, not by lack of knowledge of it. And the judgments of men are not those which count in the final verdict."
He said more than this, breaking the bonds of her despair. Others had pitied Barry. Roger defended him. She began to think of her brother, not as her imagination had pictured him, flung into utter darkness, but with his head up—his beautiful fair head, a shining sword in his hand, fighting against the powers of evil—stumbling, falling, rising again.
He saw her relax as she listened, and his love for her taught him what to say.
And as he talked, her eyes noted the change in him.
This was not the Roger Poole of the Tower Rooms. This was a Roger Poole who had found himself. She could see it in his manner—she could hear it in his voice, it shone from his eyes. Here was a man who feared nothing, not even the whispers that had once had power to hurt.