However, the light was bound to triumph in the end. The knocking became insistent, and I knew I must open the door. And then with the rush of bitter knowledge upon my naked heart I learnt what it was to have a friend. Not that Worthing wept over me. Rather it was his severe strength and calm recognition of actuality that supported me. For in his presence I accepted the inevitable as a thing not to be questioned, merely to be endured. It was the contagion of example rather than of precept, for he never that I remember spoke harshly to me as one must to the hysterical; it was merely that he faced up to the reality of the situation, and I caught something of his straight and uncompromising attitude of soul. Dirk too nursed me back to sanity in his rough way. Not that I learnt much philosophy from him; rather it would seem that he tended to undo the good that Worthing did me. For if Worthing stimulated me to strength of endurance, Dirk stimulated me to violent rebellion. He took me with him for long marches across the country, and sometimes for a tossing at sea; and always the burden of his talk was one of cursing and vengeance, till in the blackness of my heart I vowed again and again to track down my father's murderer and kill him without mercy. And at such times Dirk would encourage me with, "That's the gab, kiddy. This an't no world for milk-and-water livers. It's red blood that runs in the heart, my dear, an' that's a stuff that takes some cooling." But unaccountable as it may seem, the medicine of philosophy and the medicine of revenge, which might appear to be antidotes, didn't nullify each other. I felt a stimulation from them both. I suppose it was that the one taught me to bear and the other taught me to act. But, however that may be, with the passing of the days I found myself facing the world again, with a bitter sense of loneliness at my heart, but with no craven yielding to circumstance.