“I want to tell you how sorry I am for talking like that,” she rushed on, unheeding. “And to tell you that no man who looks and talks the way you do was ever a sot or a scoundrel. Weak, maybe. Yes, we all are. But never bad.” “Would--would you let me tell you?” he faltered, gripped by a sudden, overwhelming impulse to make this wonderful little woman his mother confessor--to tell her what he had never clearly told himself. She nodded eager, kindly assent. In a voice at first incoherent, almost broken, but that soon steadied into narrative force, Dad told the whole pitiful tale. He did not strive for effect. He spared no needful detail. He spoke as though of a third person; calmly, impartially. When the story of his Mexican disgrace was done, he went on to tell her of his homecoming, his futile life for the past fourteen years, his continued degradation, the sordid surroundings, the unworthy hopelessness of it all. Only when he spoke of Jimmie did an unconscious softness and a thrill of pride come into the deep voice. He told of his son’s departure for the front, the bedside talk with Jimmie in the moonlight, the escape from Ideala, the kneeling vigil on the hill-top where he had forever shaken off his dead self. Of his later army achievements he said little. It was twilight now, all over the battle world. The long twilight of early summer. And in the attic darkness left the faces of the man and woman visible only as dim white rifts in the gloom. Presently Dad’s deep voice ceased. There was a hush; through which the far-off throb of a complaining whippoorwill, from down in the bottom-lands, by the river, came to their ears. Mrs. Sessions had drawn insensibly closer to the speaker as the story progressed. But she had not once interrupted. Nor, now that the tale was done, did she speak. “Now you know it all,” he said, breaking the long silence. “And I suppose you’re as disgusted with me as I am with myself. As General Scott was when I--” He caught his breath with a gasp. Something in falling had touched the back of his outflung hand. Something tiny, and stingingly hot--a tear! “Mrs. Sessions!” he exclaimed in wonder. “I--I’m not given to blubbering,” she answered, choking back her sobs. “I didn’t know I was doing it. Oh, you poor, _poor_ dear!” “You don’t despise me, after all I’ve told you about--” “Despise you?” she echoed, almost shrilly. “_Despise_ you? Listen to me, sergeant! Any man can strut around, pompouslike, on the top of the mountain if he was born up there or boosted up there. But the man who can _climb_ there--as you’ve done--who can climb there out of the mire and muck that he’s been shoved down into; that man’s a--a _man_! And the mud on his garments comes pretty close to looking like royal ermine. “I’m talking like a schoolgirl that reads novels. But it’s all true. Sergeant Brinton, I’d like to shake you by the hand, please. I wish Ehud was here to do it, too!”