"_Might_ have done!" interrupted I, surprised that he should have decided at sixteen that his life was earmarked for a failure. "You'll probably live quite ten years more, so there's still time." Doe turned again and sent his gaze through the broken window, replying in a little while: "Oh, I've lived long enough to know that I'm the sort that's destined to make a mess of his life. I--oh, hang it, you wouldn't understand..." Evidently in Doe, as in me, his manhood had come down the corridor of the future and met his childhood face to face. One minute before this he was an irresponsible baby "cheeking" Moles White; now he was the germinal man, borne down with the weight of life. He paused for me to plead my understanding, and invite his confidence. But an awkwardness held me dumb, and he was obliged to continue: "I wish you could understand, because--Do you know, Rupert, why I made it up with you this afternoon?" He came away from the window and sat in a chair opposite me. "It was because I was glowing with a new resolution. It was the rippingest feeling in the world. I--I had just decided to cut with Freedham." Up to this point I had been looking into his face, but now I turned away. Instinctively I felt that, if he were going to, speak of his transactions with Freedham, he would be abashed by my gaze. He rested his elbows on his knees, and began to tie knot after knot in a piece of string. "Freedham's an extraordinary creature," he proceeded. "He first got hold of me when I was at the Nursery. He would get me in a dark corner, and alternately pet and bully me. I remember his once holding me in a frightful grip and saying: 'You're so--' (I'm only telling you what he said, Rupert)--'You're so pretty that I'd love to see you cry.' He's _that_ type, you know." For a while Doe, whose cheeks and neck were crimson, knotted his string in silence. "Then he used to give me money to encourage me to like him, and dash it, Ray! I _do_ like him. He's got such weird, majestic ideas that are different from anyone else's,--and he attracts me. His great theory is that Life is Sensation, and there must be no sensation--a law, or no law--which he has not experienced. I believed him to be right (as I do still, in part) and we--we tried everything together. We--we got drunk on a beastly occasion in his room. We didn't like it, but we pushed on, so as to find out what the sensation was. And then--oh! I wish I'd never started telling you all this--" He tied a knot with such viciousness that few would have had the patience to untie it. "Go on, old chap," I said encouragingly. I was proud of playing the sympathetic confidant; but, less natural than that, a certain abnormality in the conversation had stimulated me; I was excited to hear more.