"Shall I tell you why I don't?" he said. "It's this. Do you remember one night our finding that my father was breaking the contract he made with me about drinking? Do you remember how sordid and horrible the discovery was?" Jessie remembered quite well how Archie had laughed at it. "I remember the evening," she said. "Well, we've renewed our contract," said he, "and I'm the only person in the world who can keep my father to it. If I left him he would drink himself to death. Where, then, do you think my duty lies, Jessie? Isn't it clearly for me to save my father? Can there be a more obvious duty than that? Do you think I have a very delightful life down here, all alone with him? Wouldn't it be vastly easier for me to join my friends and go out alongside of them? I know my conduct lays me open to misconception, but I must be thick-skinned over that. But I hope you won't misjudge me. Besides, my father has said that he forbids me to go. Of course I could leave him; he doesn't lock me up. But I can't see how I should be right in leaving him. I'm the one anchor he has left." He paused a moment, thinking over, with that stupendous swiftness of brain that was the result of Martin's inspiration, all he had said, and remembered his light cynicism with regard to his "bit." "I know I rather shocked you just now," he said, "when I spoke of its being 'my bit' to console pretty women whose husbands had gone out. But sometimes one has to be flippant to conceal one's real thoughts on a serious subject, for I did not foresee then that we should talk it out. So there's the end of that jest." So that had been a jest, not to be taken seriously. But it was a grimmer affair for Jessie not to be able to take seriously Archie's seriousness. For a moment the frankness of his manner had convinced her, but very soon her conviction collapsed like a house of cards as he went on speaking. The horribleness of the discovery of his father's drinking, for instance, when what she remembered was Archie's laughter! If he could say that, what credence could possibly be placed in the picture he had drawn of himself as his father's last hope? Or what in the image of himself as one who must silently bear cruel misconception? She could believe none of it... Yet it was not the Archie whom she loved with all the sweetness and strength of her nature who spoke, but the Thing that was possessing him and filling his soul from the reservoir of some immense abyss of pure evil. She felt sure she did not misjudge him; true and infinitely tragic was her comprehension. "It is entirely for you to decide, Archie," she said. "I think I fully appreciate the worth of your reasons." Indeed, she knew not what else to say, though the bitter doubleness of her words cut her to the heart. But, if she could help Archie at all, she must at all costs retain such confidence as he gave her, must not give him the chance of quarrelling with her.