p had admitted to me
confidentially that they were more than a little afraid of him.

* * * * *

The longer we talked the more intimate, the more in the nature of a
mutual confession, our conversation became. I admitted to Banaotovich
that the hifalutin fashion in which I had left the town to win fame and
fortune years before, had been asinine in the extreme, and that it
served me just right to have to sneak back unknown and penniless.
Banaotovich rejoined that for all his pride in his school marks he had
remained a person of no importance, and that the pot had not the
slightest intention of making itself ridiculous by calling the kettle
black. He seemed almost painfully inclined to run himself down. I could
feel in his manner a sort of pathetic reaching out for sympathy and
consideration. And it began to seem as if he were about to tell me
something or ask me for something. But whatever he had to tell seemed
hard to say, and it was slow in coming over his lips.

Banaotovich ordered two bottles of the heavy native wine. I drank
sparingly of it, because it goes to my head. But Banaotovich swallowed
two or three glassfuls in hasty succession, and his cheeks grew flushed.
There was a pause. Suddenly he leaned across the table toward me and
spoke in a hoarse, excited whisper.

"Modersohn," he said anxiously, "I want to make a confession to you--a
terrible confession. It may turn you against me completely. Maybe you
don't want to hear it. If you don't, say so, and I'll go home. But it
seems as if I've got to tell somebody about it. It seems as if I've got
to find somebody who understands me and can excuse me, or it will kill
me. Shall I tell you? Shall I?"

I was startled. I was reasonably sure that Banaotovich was no criminal,
since he had lived half a century in his native city, undisturbed and
from all he had told me solvent and respected. I had always known that
he was a queer fish, a brooding, solitary sort of person, and I settled
myself to listen to some harmless bit of psychopathy which meant nothing
except to the unfortunate subject.

"My dear fellow," I said, no doubt a little patronizingly, "I am sure
you haven't anything to confess that will make you out an outrageous
rascal, but if it will do you any good to tell me your troubles, I am
ready to listen to them."

"Thank you," said Banaotovich in a trembling voice. "I've done nothing
that they can put me behind the bars for.