"My father was a manufacturer who married a Frenchwoman. My brothers have trodden carefully and securely in my father's footsteps. They are all fairly prosperous--smug, respectable fellows. I resemble my mother. After Eton and Christ Church I was pitchforked into the family business. For a time it absorbed my attention. I will tell you why later. Then, having mastered the really interesting part of it, I grew bored. I wanted to study art. After several scenes with my father, I was allowed to go my own way--a pleasant way, too, but it led downhill, you understand. I spent three winters in Venice. Then my father died, and I came into a small fortune, which I squandered. My mother helped me; then she died. My brothers cut me, condemning me as a Bohemian and a vagabond. I confess that I did take a malicious pleasure in rubbing their sleek fur the wrong way. Then I crossed the Atlantic as the guest of an American millionaire. He took me on in his own car to California. I started a studio in San Francisco--and a life class. That undid me, I found myself bankrupt. Then I fell desperately ill. Each day I felt the quicksands engulfing me." "But your friends?" I interrupted. "My friends? Yes, I had friends; but perhaps you will understand me, having seen to what depths I fell, that I couldn't bring myself to apply to my friends. Well, I was at my last gasp when I crawled up to your barn. I mean morally, for my strength was returning. You and your brother rode up. By God! I could have killed you!" "Killed us?" "You looked so fit, so prosperous, and I could read you both, could see in flaming capitals your pity, your contempt,--aye, and your disgust that a fellow-Englishman should be festering before your eyes. I asked for leave to spend the night in your barn, and you said, 'All right.' All right, when everything was so cruelly, so pitilessly the other way! Then you came back, taking for granted that I must accept whatever you offered. I wanted to refuse, but the words stuck in my throat. I followed you to the bath-house. Was I grateful? Not a bit. I decided that for your own amusement, and perhaps to staunch your English pride, which I had offended, you meant to lift a poor devil out of hell, so as to drop him again into deeper depths when the comedy was over----" "Good heavens! You thought that?" "My dear fellow, you write now, don't you? I'm giving you a bit of psychology--showing you the point of view of the worm writhing beneath the boot of lordly Man. But, always, I meant to turn, if I got the chance. I washed myself; I shaved; I slipped into your nice clean clothes. I'll admit that the warm water removed some encrusted mud from my mind, but it sharpened rather then obscured my resolution to make the most of what looked like a last chance. But when you uncorked that Léoville, shame spoiled it for me." "You drank only two glasses, I remember."