when you learned what I had done. And then you let things
drift. It was only natural. I had opened the way for you. Mother,
learning that I was a thief, restored the defalcation to save the
family honor, which was your future. We were always more or less
hard-pressed for funds. I did not gamble, but I wasted a lot. The
mother gave us an allowance of five thousand each. To this I managed
to add another five and you another four. You were always borrowing
from me. I never questioned what you did with it. I would to God I
had! It would have saved us a lot of trouble."

The hand in his relaxed and slipped from the clasp.

"Some of these things will sound bitter, but the heart behind them
isn't. So I did what I thought to be a great and glorious thing. I
was sober when I reached Chicago. I saw my deed from another angle.
Think of it; we could have given our joint note to mother's bank for
the amount. Old Henderson would have discounted it in a second. It
was too late. I went on. The few hundreds I had gave out. I've been
up against it pretty hard. There were times when I envied the
pariah-dog. But fortune came around one day, knocked, and I let her
in. I returned to make a restitution, only to learn that it had been
made by you, long ago. A trick of young Elmore's. I shouldn't have
come back if I could have sent the money."

Arthur raised his head and sat up. "Ah, why did you not write? Why
did you not let me know where you were? God is my witness, if there is
a corner of this world unsearched for you. For two years I had a man
hunting. He gave up. I believed you dead."

"Dead? Well, I was in a sense."

"You have suffered, but not as I have. Always you had before you your
great, splendid, foolish sacrifice. I had nothing to buoy me up; there
was only the drag of the recollection of an evil deed, and a moment of
pitiful weakness. The temptation was too great, Paul."

"How did it happen?"

"How does anything like that happen? Curiosity drew me first, for at
college I never played but a few games of bridge. Curiosity, desire,
then the full blaze of the passion. You will never know what that is,
Paul. It is stronger than love, or faith, or honor. God knows I never
thought myself weak; at school I was the least impetuous of the two.
Everything went, and they cheated me from the start. Roulette and
faro. Then I put my hand in the safe. To this day I can not tell why.
I owed nothin