Harry turned gravely toward his brother. "It seems to me, James, you suffer under a tendency to overestimate my virtues. You mustn't, you know; it's extremely bad for me. I should say, if questioned closely, that that was your one fault—if one expects a kindred tendency to shield me from things I ought not to be shielded from."
"Oh, rot, man!"
"You needn't talk—you do. I've felt it, all along, though you've done your job so well that for the most part I never knew what you'd saved me from."
"Well.... I might go so far as to say that when I've put you before myself I generally find I'm all right, and when I put myself first I generally find I'm all wrong. But as I've been all wrong most of the time, it doesn't signify much!"
"Hm. You put it so that I can't insist very hard. It's there, though, for all that. Funny thing. I don't believe it's a bit usual between friends, really, especially between brothers. Whatever started you on it? It must have been more or less conscious."
For a moment James thought of telling him. They had lived so long since then; it would be amusing for them to trace together the effects of that one little guiding idea. But he thought of the years ahead, and they seemed to call out to him with warning voices, voices full of a tale of tasks unfinished and the need of a vigilance sharper than before. So he only laughed a little and said:
"Oh, it's you that are exaggerating now! You mustn't get ideas about it; it's no more than you'd do for me, or any one for any one else he cares about. But little as it is, don't grudge it to me, for though it may not have done you much good, it's been the saving of me...."
So they walked and talked as the sun sank low and the night fell gently from a cloudless sky. To Madge and Beatrice, seeing them silhouetted against that final blaze of glory in the west, they seemed almost as one figure.