Then Rickie began a new appeal—not to pity, for now he was in no mood to whimper. For all its pathos, there was something heroic in this meeting. “I warn you to stop here with me, Stephen. No one else in the world will look after you. As far as I know, you have never been really unhappy yet or suffered, as you should do, from your faults. Last night you nearly killed yourself with drink. Never mind why I’m willing to cure you. I am willing, and I warn you to give me the chance. Forgive me or not, as you choose. I care for other things more.” Stephen looked at him at last, faintly approving. The offer was ridiculous, but it did treat him as a man. “Let me tell you of a fault of mine, and how I was punished for it,” continued Rickie. “Two years ago I behaved badly to you, up at the Rings. No, even a few days before that. We went for a ride, and I thought too much of other matters, and did not try to understand you. Then came the Rings, and in the evening, when you called up to me most kindly, I never answered. But the ride was the beginning. Ever since then I have taken the world at second-hand. I have bothered less and less to look it in the face—until not only you, but every one else has turned unreal. Never Ansell: he kept away, and somehow saved himself. But every one else. Do you remember in one of Tony Failing’s books, ‘Cast bitter bread upon the waters, and after many days it really does come back to you’? This had been true of my life; it will be equally true of a drunkard’s, and I warn you to stop with me.” “I can’t stop after that cheque,” said Stephen more gently. “But I do remember the ride. I was a bit bored myself.” Agnes, who had not been seeing to the breakfast, chose this moment to call from the passage. “Of course he can’t stop,” she exclaimed. “For better or worse, it’s settled. We’ve none of us altered since last Sunday week.” “There you’re right, Mrs. Elliot!” he shouted, starting out of the temperate past. “We haven’t altered.” With a rare flash of insight he turned on Rickie. “I see your game. You don’t care about _me_ drinking, or to shake _my_ hand. It’s some one else you want to cure—as it were, that old photograph. You talk to me, but all the time you look at the photograph.” He snatched it up. “I’ve my own ideas of good manners, and to look friends between the eyes is one of them; and this”—he tore the photograph across “and this”—he tore it again—“and these—” He flung the pieces at the man, who had sunk into a chair. “For my part, I’m off.”