“I can see a great many things now that I have never been able to see in the past, Harry ... one of them is that I’ve been a self-blinded Pharisee all my life. All I needed was a hard enough kick to show me that at bottom I’m no better than other men; not half as good or as strong as some other men who make no profession of their goodness or strength. I got the kick, finally--no matter how, but I got it--and ... well, I guess I have found my level. I’ve been in hell for the last fourteen days and nights, and if I am just beginning to struggle out, it is at the bottom and not at the top.” Bromley was silent for a little time; then he said huskily: “You’re not going to break with me, Phil? I couldn’t stand for that, you know. You will have to go your own way, I suppose; but wherever you go, or whatever you do, I’m still your partner. Just remember that when the pull comes the hardest, won’t you?” “I’ll try to. But you can’t do anything for me, Harry; nobody can. I’ve walked deliberately into the devil’s wood and got lost. If there is any way out--as there doesn’t seem to be now--I’ve got to find it for myself. Can you understand that?” “Perhaps I can.” Another silence, and then Bromley went on: “What shall I say to Jean?--or will you say it to her yourself?” “You know very well I won’t say it myself. If you tell her anything you must tell her the plain truth: that the man she has known as Philip Trask was a sorry hypocrite; a whited sepulchre, with the cleanliness all on the outside and full of dead men’s bones within.” “It isn’t that bad, Philip.” “Yes it is; just that bad. I got my kick, as I have said, and it was hard enough, God knows. Instead of taking it like a man, I went under. In a single fortnight I have measured all the depths--broken all the moorings. I have shut myself out of the world of decent people, and I’ve only decency enough left in me to know that I shall never be able to look a pure woman in the face again. I have only one comfort now, Harry, and that is that I have never given Jean any reason to believe that I was in love with her.” “You are sure of that, are you?” “Yes; quite sure. After the fatuous fashion of the complete Pharisee I have been holding off, telling myself that there was plenty of time, that I would wait until----” he stopped abruptly, and Bromley finished the sentence for him, not without an edge in his tone. “You’d wait until the peach was fully ripe; then you’d reach up and pluck it.” “No,” was the sober denial, made with no touch of resentment. “You must give the devil his due, Harry. It wasn’t altogether as rotten as that, though maybe it did lean a little that way, at times. Never mind; it’s all over now. You have a free field.” “I?” “Yes. I haven’t been blind. Jean is heart-free, and I saw at once that it was going to lie between us two. I’m eliminated.”