‘It must have been she who sent me the money. I had a mind not to take it at first. Like a bone to a dog to keep him from following you. I thought for half-an-hour I wouldn’t take it: but after all,’ he said, with a low laugh, ‘money’s not a bad thing in itself. It’s a make-up for many things--when you can get nothing else.’ ‘Me poor soul! if you’ve sinned you’ve suffered,’ said Montressor, with a sigh of sympathy. The other laughed again. ‘There’s something to be said on both sides. What’s sin? It’s a thing that takes different aspects according to your point of view. And you may say what’s suffering too? That is a pang to one person which would be the course of nature to another. My friend Joe never expected to have any welcome on the other side of the gates at Portland; not he. He was content to get out of it, to go where he pleased, to get drunk comfortably next night with nobody to interfere. He had no ridiculous expectations. What you call suffering to me was bliss to Joe.’ Montressor did not know what to reply; nothing in his own life, and not all the expedients of the theatre could furnish him with a fit answer. He tried to throw into his face and the solemn shake of his head, something which he ought to feel. ‘All other things are according to your point of view,’ the other went on; ‘but money’s absolute. It’s always a good thing in its way. I took it, and I consoled myself that on the whole--that on the whole---- But children have a droll sort of hold upon you,’ he said, quickly, with a broken laugh. ‘I always felt I’d give a great deal to know what had become of my little boy.’ Montressor stretched out his hand, and took hold of May’s across the table. Both nature and the theatre helped him here. ‘Me poor friend!’ he said. ‘He was a delightful little chap. It might be because I was partial, you know--but I think there never was a finer little chap. I used to go upstairs, when I came in late, and fetch him out of his bed, out of his sleep, his mother said, and looked death and destruction at me--but it never did him any harm. I shouldn’t wonder if he remembered it now. I think I see him in his white nightgown, with his two eyes shining, his hair all ruffled up, his little bare feet.’ His voice ran off in a low, sobbing cough. ‘I never saw such a little chap:--never a bit afraid, though I wasn’t very steady sometimes when I carried him downstairs.’ There was a pause. Montressor had no stage precedent before him to teach him how to act in such an extraordinary crisis: but Nature began to make a hundred confused suggestions, which at first he could scarcely understand. The stillness seemed to throb and thrill around them, when this monologue ceased, demanding something from the actor, he could not tell what; some help which he did not know how to give, scarcely what it was.