"I know that your patience is exhausted, Billy. I know that you are sensible enough to see that I am no fit occupant of your house. Your wife is a sensitive, delicate woman. Your child is--" "Oh, _that_ is what you think I mean!" William broke in. "Great God! you think that I am worried about _that_! Listen to me, Charlie. You sit there accusing yourself, perhaps feeling that you have committed unpardonable sins, but look straight at me. As God is my judge, I'd be the happiest man alive if I could exchange places with you this morning. You have done this, and you have done that, but you have been honest--honest--honest--honest! I've seen you tried. I've seen you need money badly, but you have never touched a penny that was not your own. Charlie, I am a thief!" Charles straightened up in his chair. He laid his slender hand with the long fingers and curving nails on the table and stared, as if bewildered by what he had heard. "I don't know what you mean, Billy," he said, slowly shaking his head. "You can't be in earnest." "But I am," the banker groaned. "I have wanted to tell you for a week past, and I would have done so if you hadn't begun to drink again. Do you remember when I came to your desk Friday afternoon? I wanted then to ask you into my office, but I saw you had been drinking, and I knew that you'd not understand. I've taken money from the vaults, Charlie. I'm short sixty thousand dollars, and there is no chance now to avoid detection." It was as if the declaration had completely sobered the younger man. He rose to his feet, towering above the shrunken form in the chair. "You can't mean that seriously," he faltered, his drink-flushed face paling. "Oh, you can't, Billy!" "But I do. My transactions have been secret; through a broker in New York I bought copper on a margin. It kept going against me till all my funds and available collateral were used up. I was sure it would win. All hell told me it would win. I couldn't stand the disgrace of failure. It meant losing my position, too. I struggled with it all one night in the bank, and the next morning, when the time-lock opened the vaults, I took the money and, with it in my pocket, I went to New York and put it up." "You did? You did? My God! Billy, and lost it!" "Within twenty-four hours. Charlie, you have been a drunkard, but your soul has remained clean. But I'm lost--I'm lost. I'll be sent to jail. My wife will shrink in shame from the public gaze. My child will grow up to see that I have set her, by my own act, into a despised class. Great God! that little trusting thing will have to bear my just punishment! So--so you thought I'd come here to reproach you, eh? You say you have been turned _out_ of a club. I am being turned _into_ a prison. Charlie, I was a coward when I took that money. I am a coward now, and I cannot face this thing. You must not object to what I have to do. It is dishonorable, but it is more honorable than the other."