He took his wallet from his pocket and after a short search produced an old and dirty postal card bearing on its face the blurred but still readable legend "All right. James." He handed it to his brother.
"Gosh," said James, when he had read it, "do you mean to say you've kept that old thing ever since?"
"Ever since the day I got it. There was something about it that was comforting and optimistic and—well, like you; and I used to take it out and look at it occasionally when I got particularly down in the mouth. And I used to persuade myself, after a while, that it all would come out right, in the end; that somehow James would make it all right—you see how the prophecy has come true!... And the extraordinary part of it is that even while I thought that way about you, I simply couldn't break the ice and tell you about it all. I don't know why—I just couldn't!"
"I know," said James; "I know the feeling."
"Isn't it incredible, James, that what seemed perfectly natural and reasonable—inevitable, even—a few weeks, or days, or even an hour ago, should appear so utterly asinine now!... Pride, vainglory and hypocrisy—all of them, and a lot more! Sometimes I can't believe it possible for one person to assemble in himself all the vices that I do."
"Well, you don't, either," said James seriously. "That's one thing I want to clear up. Harry, don't you see that the blame for all this lies with me just as much as with you—more than with you—entirely with me?—"
"No, I don't," began Harry stoutly, but James continued:
"And that the real reason you didn't call on me was because I had steadily shut myself away from you? Oh, Harry, I've behaved like the devil during the last three years! It's just as you say; a course of action you never even question at one time, a little later seems so silly, so criminally silly, that you can't believe you seriously thought of following it!... I know perfectly well that a lot of the things I thought were horribly important a few years ago really aren't worth the paper they're printed on. The perspective changes so, even with these two years—less than two years—out of college! Good Lord, if a man is really the right sort, if he has a good, warm-hearted nature at the bottom of him, thinks good thoughts, does nice things, uses to the best of his judgment what gifts and talents Providence is pleased to give him, what in Heaven's name does it matter whether he manages the crew or goes Bones, in the end?... I've been a fool, Harry. I've set the greatest value on the most worthless things; I've worshiped stone gods; I've let things irritate me that no sane man has any business to be irritated by. Worst of all, I've let these silly, worthless things come between you and me and spoil—well, one of the best things that ever came into my life!... All this estrangement business has been mainly my fault. I'm older, and have had more experience, and, I always thought, more common sense—though I haven't really—and I was the one that ought to have kept things straight. Harry, I'm sorry for it all!"
Harry was more moved than he would have liked to show by this confession. He was still enough of an undergraduate to be much impressed by his brother's casual mention of his senior society—the first time since he had been tapped the name had ever passed James' lips in his presence.
"It's a pleasure to hear you talk, James," he said, "but I hope you won't misunderstand me when I say that there's not one word of truth in all you've said—the last part of it, I mean. It's only convinced me more thoroughly of my own fault. Before, there might have been a shadow of doubt in my mind about my being entirely to blame. Now there is absolutely none.—Funny, that a person you like blaming himself should really be blaming you! It always seems that way, somehow...."