"It's too late to say anything. You can't undo wrong by just saying you are wrong. The plain fact is, I can't trust you. There's only one end for it--you must go your way, and I mine." There was a rough dignity in Masterman as he uttered these words which was profoundly moving. Had he been only angry, violent, or satirical, Arthur could have borne it. He would have been sustained by the justice of his cause. But now that very justice on which he had relied for strength broke beneath him like a rotten prop. He who had been so keen for justice was himself unjust. He saw himself--an implicit parricide, a child who had taken arms against his father. And he saw with a sudden agonised clearness of perception his father's nature, with its strange blending of rugged virtue and unscrupulous craft, its hard, indomitable fibre shot through by soft veins of tenderness, his public traffic with dishonour almost counterbalanced by his stern reticence under the early cruelties he had endured, and his honourable, stoical silence under their brutal ignominies--he saw all this, and he saw himself as weak, hysteric, foolish, crying out for justice in another, but blind to the folly of his own behaviour. "I am sorry, father," he said in a broken voice. "That's the first sensible word you've said to-night. Only, you see, it comes too late. You and me's got to part. Our roads lie different." "What do you wish me to do, father?" "I don't know. I want to think things over. You'd better go now." And then with a sudden savage burst of anger, as Arthur left the room, he shouted after him: "You can take my compliments to Dr. Leet, and tell him he's a confounded interfering fool!" But there was more of pain than anger in this violent dismissal. X THE FAREWELL The night had fallen upon Eagle House. Arthur sat alone in his bedroom at the open window. A soft wind talked to itself in the branches of the big mulberry tree on the lawn; a few placid stars shone in the blue-black heavens, then the late moon like a yellow fire; a nested sparrow chirped contentedly beneath the eaves; and, like a solemn wash of waves upon a hidden beach, London moaned and murmured through all its vast circumference. Out of the deep night the Spirit of his own Youth arose, and sat beside him. "Listen to me," said the Spirit. "I bring with me two swords--Faith and Courage. Gird them on." But London laughed. A soft derision shook the leaves upon the mulberry tree, and the waves upon the hidden beach were scornful. "You have your life to live. Live it," said the Spirit. But the stars, like eyes, turned slowly toward him in despairing irony. "How many millions have we heard say that," they whispered, "and each has been overcome in turn, and has sunk in nameless dust." "You are not as the nameless millions," said the Spirit. "You are yourself, with your own right and power to live."