The Girl. He was punished.
Strickland [nodding]. He served a year in jail. God! What a year! His folks wouldn't do a thing for him: they said such a thing had never happened in the family. And they let him take the consequences. [He pauses.] When he got out—[stopping to correct himself]—when he was let out, his family offered him help. But he was too proud to accept the help: it hadn't been offered when he needed it most. He told his family that he never wanted to see them again. He changed his name so they couldn't find him. He left his home town. He came here.
The Girl. And he has been honest ever since!
Strickland. Ever since: for twenty-eight years! It was hard at times, terribly hard! In the beginning, when he had to go hungry and cold, when he saw other men riding around in carriages, he wondered if he hadn't made a mistake. He had knocked about a good deal; he had learnt a lot, and he wouldn't have been caught so easily the second time. It was almost worth taking the chance! It was almost worth getting a foot of lead pipe, and waiting in some dark street, waiting, waiting for some sleek honest man with his pockets full of money! It would have been so simple! And he knew how! I don't know why he didn't do it.
The Girl. Tell me more.
Strickland. He managed to live. It wasn't pleasant living. But he stayed alive! I don't like to think of what he did to stay alive: it was humiliating; it was shameful, because he hadn't been brought up to do that kind of thing, but it was honest. Honest, and when he walked home from his work at six o'clock, walked home to save the nickel, his betters never crowded him because they didn't want to soil their clothes with his honest dirt! He had thought the year in jail was terrible. The first year he was free was worse. He had never been hungry in jail.
The Girl. Then his chance came.
Strickland. Yes, it was a chance. He found a purse in the gutter, and he returned it to the owner before he had made up his mind whether to keep it or not. So they said he was honest! He knew he wasn't! He knew that he had returned it because there was so much money in it that he was afraid to keep it, but he never told them that. And when the man who owned the purse gave him a job, he worked—worked because he was afraid not to work—worked so that he wouldn't have any time to think, because he knew that if he began to think, he would begin to steal! Then they said he was a hard worker, and they promoted him: they made him manager. That gave him more chances to steal, but there were so many men watching him, so many men anxious for him to make a slip so that they might climb over him, that he didn't dare.
[He pauses.]
The Girl. And then?