“It won't ruin you, James. Your name isn't mentioned yet. Perhaps it may not be. It can't hurt you, even if it is.”
“I tell you it will ruin me both socially and politically. Once it gets out nobody will trust me. I'll be the son of a thief,” James insisted wildly.
“You're the son of a man who made a slip and has paid for it,” answered Jeff steadily. “Don't let your ideas get warped. This town is full of men who have done wrong and haven't paid for it.”
“That's one of your fool socialist theories.” James spoke sharply and irritably. “No man's guilty till the law says so. They haven't been in the penitentiary. He has. That's what damns me if it gets out.”
Jeff laid a hand affectionately on his cousin's shoulder. “Don't you believe it for a moment. There's no moral distinction between the man who has paid and the man who hasn't paid for his sins toward society. There is good and there is bad in all of us, closely intertwined, knit together into the very warp and woof of our lives. We're all good and we're all bad.”
It was with James a purely personal equation. He could not forget its relation to himself.
“My name is to be voted on at the University Club next month. I'll be blackballed to a dead certainty,” he said miserably.
“Probably, if the story gets out. It's tough, I know.” Jeff's eyes gleamed angrily. “And why should they? You're just as good a man to-day as you were yesterday. But there's nothing so fettering, so despicable as good form. It blights. Let a man bow down to the dead hand of custom and he can never again be true to what he thinks and knows. His judgment gets warped. Soon Madame Grundy does his thinking for him, along well-grooved lines.”
“Oh, well! That's just talk. What am I to do?” James broke out nervously.
“I know what I would do in your case.”