e is making way and the world is smoothing
itself out, though my wound in the leg is nothing in comparison to your
blindness. I don't talk to you about compensations and patience. That's
the gabble of people who are comfortable and haven't suffered. _We_ know
that for a man who is young and active, and who is doing well in a
career where activity is a necessity, there are no compensations if his
career's suddenly cut short through no fault of his."

"Through no fault of his," repeated Durrance. "I agree with you. It is
only the man whose career is cut short through his own fault who gets
compensations."

Sutch glanced sharply at his companion. Durrance had spoken slowly and
very thoughtfully. Did he mean to refer to Harry Feversham, Sutch
wondered. Did he know enough to be able so to refer to him? Or was it
merely by chance that his words were so strikingly apposite?

"Compensations of what kind?" Sutch asked uneasily.

"The chance of knowing himself for one thing, for the chief thing. He is
brought up short, stopped in his career, perhaps disgraced." Sutch
started a little at the word. "Yes, perhaps--disgraced," Durrance
repeated. "Well, the shock of the disgrace is, after all, his
opportunity. Don't you see that? It's his opportunity to know himself at
last. Up to the moment of disgrace his life has all been sham and
illusion; the man he believed himself to be, he never was, and now at
the last he knows it. Once he knows it, he can set about to retrieve his
disgrace. Oh, there are compensations for such a man. You and I know a
case in point."

Sutch no longer doubted that Durrance was deliberately referring to
Harry Feversham. He had some knowledge, though how he had gained it
Sutch could not guess. But the knowledge was not to Sutch's idea quite
accurate, and the inaccuracy did Harry Feversham some injustice. It was
on that account chiefly that Sutch did not affect any ignorance as to
Durrance's allusion. The passage of the years had not diminished his
great regard for Harry; he cared for him indeed with a woman's
concentration of love, and he could not endure that his memory should be
slighted.

"The case you and I know of is not quite in point," he argued. "You are
speaking of Harry Feversham."

"Who believed himself a coward, and was not one. He commits the fault
which stops his career, he finds out his mistake, he sets himself to the
work of retrieving his disgrace. Surely it's a case quite in point."