For the first time Paul bowed his head. "I'm sorry," said he. "I forgot." Then he raised it again. "But that's all over and buried in the past."
"It may be unburied."
"How?"
"Don't you see?" cried Jane. "Even I can. If you spring your relationship upon the public, it will create an enormous sensation—it will set the place on fire with curiosity. They'll dig up everything they can about you—everything they can about him. Oh, Paul, don't you see.
"It's up agin a man, sonny," said Barney Bill, limping towards them, "it's up agin a candidate, you understand, him not being a Fenian or a Irish patriot, that he's been in gaol. Penal servitude ain't a nice state of life to be reminded of, sonny. Whereas if you leaves things as they is, nobody's going to ask no questions."
"That's my point," said Silas Finn.
Paul looked from one to the other, darkly. In a kind of dull fierce passion he had made up his mind to clear himself before the world, to rend to tatters his garments of romance, to snap his fingers at the stars and destiny and such-like deluding toys, to stand a young Ajax defying the thunderbolts. Here came the first check.
"If they found out as how he'd done time, they'd find out for why," said Bill, cocking his head earnestly.
As Paul, engaged in sombre thought, made no reply, Silas turned away, his hands uplifted in supplication, and prayed aloud. He had sinned in giving way to his anger. He prostrated himself before the divine vengeance. If this was his apportioned punishment, might God give him meekness and strength to bear it. The tremulous, crying voice, the rapt, fanatical face, and the beseeching attitude struck a bizarre note in the comfortable and worldly room. Supported on either side by Jane, helpless and anxious, and Barney Bill, crooked, wrinkled, with his close-cropped white hair and little liquid diamond eyes, still nervously tearing his hat-brim, he looked almost grotesque. To Paul he seemed less a man than a creation of another planet, with unknown and incalculable instincts and impulses, who had come to earth and with foolish hand had wiped out the meaning of existence. Yet he felt no resentment, but rather a weary pity for the stranger blundering through an unsympathetic world. As soon as there came a pause in the prayer, he said not ungently:
"The Almighty is not going to use me as an instrument to punish you, if I can help it. I quite appreciate your point. I'll say nothing."