Good God!  Why should he hesitate to take what she was willing to give?  He had atoned, saved his cousin’s life, lived decently, honorably as he had promised, kept faith with Tony herself when he might perhaps have won her on baser terms than he had made himself keep to because he loved her as she said “in the high way as well as all the other ways.”  He would contrive some way of giving his cousin back the money.  He did not want it.  He only wanted Tony and her love.  Why in the name of all the devils should he who had sinned all his life, head up and eyes open, balk at this one sin, the negative sin of mere silence, when it would give him what he wanted more than all the world?  What was he afraid of?  The answer he would not let himself discover.  He was afraid of Tony Holiday’s clear eyes but he was more afraid of something else—­his own soul which somehow Tony had created by loving and believing in him.

All the next day, the day before they were to leave on the northern journey, Alan behaved as if all the devils of hell which he had invoked were with him.  The old mocking bitterness of tongue was back, an even more savage light than Dick remembered that night of their quarrel was in his green eyes.  The man was suddenly acidulated as if he had over night suffered a chemical transformation which had affected both mind and body.  A wild beast tortured, evil, ready to pounce, looked out of his drawn, white face.

Dick wondered greatly what had caused the strange reaction and seeing the other was suffering tremendously for some reason or other unexplained and perhaps inexplicable was profoundly sorry.  His friendship for the man who had saved his life was altogether too strong and deep to be shaken by this temporary lapse into brutality which he had known all along was there although held miraculously in abeyance these many weeks.  The man was a genius, with all the temperamental fluctuations of mood which are comprehensible and forgivable in a genius.  Dick did not begrudge the other any relief he might find in his debauch of ill humor, was more than willing he should work it off on his humble self if it could do any good though he would be immensely relieved when the old friendly Alan came back.

Twilight descended.  Dick turned from the mirror after a critical survey of his own lean, fever parched, yellow countenance.

“Lord!  I look like a peanut,” he commenced disgustedly.  “I say, Massey, when we get back to New York I think I should choke anybody if I were you who dared to say we looked alike.  One must draw the line somewhere at what constitutes a permissible insult.”  He grinned whimsically at his own expense, turned back to the mirror.  “Upon my word, though, I believe it is true.  We do look alike.  I never saw it until this minute.  Funny things—­resemblances.”

“This isn’t so funny,” drawled Alan.  “We had the same great grandfather.”

Dick whirled about staring at the other man as if he thought him suddenly gone mad.