When he came to me at Washington, in December, he looked just as before,--calm, robust, cool, cynical, and dressed in the very extreme of the extreme fashion. I received him as if nothing had happened. It was not until the current of mutual liking was again flowing freely between us that I said: "Doc, may I impose on your friendship to the extent of an intrusion into your private affairs?" He started, and gave me a quick look, his color mounting. "Yes," he said after a moment. "When I heard from you," I went on, "I made some inquiries. I owe you no apology. You had given me a shock,--one of the severest of my life. But they told me that you never let--that--that peculiarity of yours interfere with business." His head was hanging. "I always go away," he said. "Nobody that knows me ever sees me when--at that time." I laid my hand on his arm. "Doc, why do you do--that sort of thing?" The scar came up into his face to put agony into the reckless despair that looked from his eyes. For an instant I stood on the threshold of _his_ Chamber of Remorse and Vain Regret,--and well I knew where I was. "Why not?" he asked bitterly. "There's always a--sort of horror--inside me. And it grows until I can't bear it. And then--I drown it--why shouldn't I?" "That's very stupid for a man of your brains," said I. "There's nothing--nothing in the world, except death--that can not be wiped out or set right. Play the game, Doc. Play it with me for five years. Play it for all there is in it. Then--go back, if you want to." He thought a long time, and I did not try to hurry him. At length he said, in his old off-hand manner: "Well, I'll go you, Senator; I'll not touch a drop." And he didn't. Whenever I thought I saw signs of the savage internal battle against the weakness, I gave him something important and absorbing to do, and I kept him busy until I knew the temptation had lost its power for the time. This is the proper place to put it on the record that he was the most scrupulously honest man I have ever known. He dealt with the shadiest and least scrupulous of men--those who train their consciences to be the eager servants of their appetites; he handled hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions, first and last, all of it money for which he could never have been forced to account. He has had at one time as much as half a million dollars in checks payable to bearer. I am not confiding by nature or training, but I am confident that he kept not a penny for himself beyond his salary and his fixed commission. I put his salary at the outset, at ten thousand a year; afterward, at fifteen; finally, at twenty. His commissions, perhaps, doubled it.