"The better half. I'm a rotten lot, Janey. You'll be far happier when I'm gone. I'm a sulky brute--don't contradict me; I know it. I'm a sulky, bad-tempered brute. Again and again I've spoiled your happiness and the lad's--I've done nothing but snap and snarl at you, and I've gone whining about the place when you wanted to be cheerful. You've both been utter sports to put up with me so long--you'll notice the difference when I'm away, if you can't realise it now." Janey was sitting on the bed, drowned in tears. "Aren't you happy with us?" asked Leonard. "Hardly--or I shouldn't be going." He spoke with all the exaggerated brutality of the man who sees himself obliged to hurt those he loves. "It's not your fault," he continued in a gentler voice, "it's mine. I'm such a waster. I'm a miserable, restless rotter, bound to make myself and every one else unhappy. Now if I go to London, I shall work--I shall have something to live for." "Fame, you mean," sobbed Janey. "Well, something of that kind." He had finished shaving, and came and sat down by her on the bed, forcing her drowned eyes to look into his. "Janey, don't you want me to be famous? Wouldn't you like to be the sister of a well-known violinist instead of Convict Seventy-six? Wouldn't you like to see me fill the Albert Hall?" "Fill hell!" shouted Leonard. "D'you really believe all the rot that old bounder spoke?" "Well, it isn't likely he'd teach me for nothing if he didn't expect to make something out of me." "Yes--that'll be just what he'll do--and he'll make a fat lot more than you will." "Oh, don't go!" sobbed Janey. Nigel looked wretchedly from one to the other. "Janey," he cried, drawing her close to him, and quivering in the agony of his appeal, "Janey, can't you understand?--I want to start a new life, I want to throw off all my beastly past. I want to make my name--your name--clean and honourable. I dragged it into the mud, and I must pull it out again. Oh, I've suffered so, Janey. I can't get out of prison, I feel more helplessly shut up than ever I did at Parkhurst. But now I--can be--free." The last words burst from him in a choking cry. He flung himself back from her, and looked into her eyes. Then he was surprised, for he saw in them, swimming in tears, a glimmer of understanding. "Janey," he continued, putting his lips close to her face, and mumbling his appeal almost incoherently, "I can't expect you to grasp all that this means to me. You're good, you're pure--you don't know what it is to have a horrible stain on your heart, which all your tears don't seem able to wash away. But can't you put yourself for a moment in my place and realise what it is to hunger for a decent life, to dream of whiteness and purity and innocence, and burn to make them yours?--to be willing to give the whole world--just to be--clean?" "I think I can," said Janey. CHAPTER XV THE SERMON ON FORGIVENESS