“I can't touch it. I have been a damned villain, I know. I was hard put to it, and I worked upon a girl's emotions so that I could marry her for her money. Then, by Heaven, I began to love her, finished by loving her madly, with an insensate passion. To get her, I committed a cowardly crime. I broke my parole, as it were, with you. I deserve every epithet of dishonour as regards that which you like to heap upon me, but to carry on this horrible, hideous blackmail--by God, I can't do it. Last night has turned me into a moral man. I'll forswear sack and live cleanly for the rest of my life. I could vomit with disgust. It is _écourant_,--makes one's heart retch! Do you know what I've found out? You asked me once whether my father didn't make me an allowance. That put me on the track last night. I cross-questioned, found out that for years and years Mr. Lanyon, besides submitting to my fathers extortion, had given him £400 a year to be handed to me as an allowance; and I've never in my life received a penny of it, so help me God, never! Your father has made atonement, every atonement. I learn that he has been sucked dry, and that there is nothing left for you. It is I who now must make atonement for my father. Could blackmail be more abject than his? Consider for one ghastly moment the nature of it. In the name of charity, for the sake of what is left of my manhood, take back all this money.” He had delivered this harangue with his old fervour and declamatory gestures, and when he had ended he flung himself into an armchair and wiped his brow with his handkerchief. Suddenly he started again to his feet and seized a folded folio document lying on the table. “See,” said he. “I've been down to Higginson the solicitor this morning, and executed a deed of gift, making the whole thing over to you, less the legacy duty. For Heaven's sake, take it and let me feel an honest man again.” Sylvester read through the document. Then he folded it up and put it in his pocket. “The three thousand I'll take,” he said. “The remainder, with your permission, I'll give to the Prisoners' Aid Society; my father took a keen interest in it.” “Anything, so long as I don't touch it,” said Roderick, lighting another cigarette. “Ha! Now I feel free, and can take up the threads of life again. By the way, when you go, think as charitably of my father as you can. I've done with him for ever and ever, but I've explained him to myself. He is a perfect type of the non-moral being, the instinctive criminal. There's a family history which you as a physician would find interesting. To me as a poor devil of an artist, it is a bogey which only walks abroad in the night of my mind. I suppose I have a share in the family taint, but as I hope never to propagate my species, it will die with me.”