rview during
which, by voice and manner and attitude, he appeared to me like a
beaten man. His own bravery at the reception had gone for naught. He
was overwhelmed by the hideous insolence of it.

"I shall never get that man's voice out of my ears as long as I live,"
he said hoarsely.

After a while he added: "I wonder whether there is any rest or
purification for me this side of the grave."

I said tentatively, for we had never discussed matters of religion: "If
you believe in Christ, you must believe in the promise regarding the
sins that be as scarlet."

But he turned it aside. "In the olden days, men like me turned monk and
found salvation in fasting and penance. The times in which we live have
changed and we with them, my friend. Nos mulamur in illis, as the tag
goes."

We went on talking--or rather he talked and I listened. Now and again
he would help himself to a drink or a cigarette, and I marvelled at the
clear assurance with which he performed the various little operations.
I, lying in bed, lost all sense of pain, almost of personality. My
little ailments, my little selfish love of Betty, my little humdrum
life itself dwindled insignificant before the tragic intensity of this
strange, curse-ridden being.

And all the tune we had not spoken of Betty--except the Betty of long
ago. It was I, finally, who gave him the lead.

"And Betty?" said I.

He held out his hand in a gesture that was almost piteous.

"I could tear her from my life. I had no alternative. In the tearing I
hurt her cruelly. To know it was not the least of the burning hell I
lit for myself. But I couldn't tear her from my heart. When a brute
beast like me does love a woman purely and ideally, it's a desperate
business. It means God's Heaven to him, while it means only an earthly
paradise to the ordinary man. It clutches hold of the one bit of
immortal soul he has left, and nothing in this world can make it let
go. That's why I say it's a desperate business."

"Yes, I can understand," said I.

"I schooled myself to the loss of her. It was part of my punishment.
But now she has come back into my life. Fate has willed it so. Does it
mean that I am forgiven?"

"By whom?" I asked. "By God?"

"By whom else?"

"How dare man," said I, "speak for the Almighty?"

"How is man to know?"

"That's a hard question," said I. "I can only think of answering it by
saying that a man knows of God's forgiveness by the measure of the
Peace of God