It was a splendid offer which might well dazzle a youth who a week ago had been acquainted with starvation. Had it come on that night when he shuddered at the bread-line, he would have snatched it as a starving dog flies upon a bone. But he had had time to recapture his self-control. He had been fed with good meat, he had slept, and once more the physical machine ran sweetly. And he had also had a terrifying glimpse of what the lust of gold meant, he had just heard Bundy's own expression of innocent regret, he had before him the man himself. Did he envy him? Something half-heroic in those Homeric labours he could recognise, but what about their object? And it came to him with the vividness of a revelation that there were elements in his own nature that responded all too eagerly to the bribe held out to him; that if he yielded now he would go the way of multitudes whose only god is wealth; that if he resisted now he might preserve those higher ideals of life so intimately dear and sacred to him, and only thus could they be retained. No, it must not be. The die was cast in silence, and the golden phantom vanished. "Mr. Bundy," he said in a low and trembling voice, "you have made me a munificent offer. You have spoken to me your own intimate thoughts. Will you now let me speak mine with equal frankness?" "Surely." "Don't think me ungrateful, but I must refuse your offer." "Why?" "For reasons, some of which you have supplied, some of which lie in my own character. To be quite frank, I am not strong enough to resist the fascination of wealth. Some men know how to set a boundary to their desires, to stop there, and say, 'I will go no farther.' I do not believe I am one of these. If I once took the road of wealth, I should push on to the utmost limit. I might not become avaricious, but the fascination of the game would absorb me, and God only knows whether I might not become cruel and hard in course of time. Well, I dare not risk it, and that is the truth, the humiliating truth, if you like. The life I have always planned for myself is a life of quiet toil, simple, content--books, a garden, a home: I cannot let it go. My only anchorage in life lies there; without it I know not whither I might drift." He ended. He had not noticed Bundy's face as he spoke; he had been too absorbed in his own confession. He saw that face now--pale, eager, and with tears upon the cheek. To his immense surprise, Bundy sprang up and flung his arms about his neck. "My dear fellow," he cried, "I understand. Ah, you little know how you've torn the veil from my own heart! I once had all those thoughts. I would have entered the Church; I don't know why I didn't. I took another road--the wrong road, I suppose, and here I am.... Well, well! it can't be altered now. "You're the best and kindest man I ever knew," cried Arthur. "And I know some one else who would say so too--Mrs. Bundy."