"No matter," beating some dust off his boot. "But for Frazier,—I've talked that over with Judith, and—I don't value human life as you do: it may Lave been my residence in the South. It matters little how a man dies, so he lives right. This Frazier, if he dies to defend his package, would do a nobler deed than in any of his dime-scraping days. For me, my part is not robbery. The paper is neither specie nor a draft."
His tongue swung fluently now, for it had convinced himself.
"There is but a night left to decide. What will you do, Stephen?"
He put his hand on the green coat with its gaudy buttons, and leaned against his brother as they used to go arms over shoulders to school. Soulé's big throat was full of tears; he had never felt so full of sorrowful pity as in this the foulest purpose of his life. Unselfish it seemed to him. O God! what a hard life Stephen's had been! This would cure him: two or three sea-voyages, a winter in Florence, would freshen him a little, maybe,—but not much.
"Eh? What will you do, old fellow?" striking his shoulder. "This is the last night."
"I know that. I have been waiting for it all my life."
He put his red handkerchief up to his mouth to conceal the face, as if its meaning were growing too plain. Soulé looked at him fixedly a moment, then, taking him by the button, began tapping off his sentences on his breast.
"I'll state the case. I'll be plain. Stephen, you want food; you want clothes; you"—
"Is that all I want?" facing him.
The woman started, as she saw his face fully, and his look, for the first time. A quiet blue eye, unutterably kind and sad: a slow, compelling face, that would look on his life barely, day after day, year after year, never drowsing over its sore or pain until he had wrung its full meaning out to the last dregs.