Donaldson with hands in his pockets stood in front of Arsdale, who had slumped down into a big leather chair, and admired his work. There was much still to be done, but, comparing the man before him with the thing he had brought in here some thirty hours before, the improvement was most satisfactory. Arsdale, with trimmed hair and clean, shaven face, in a new outfit from shoes to collar, and sane even if depressed, began to look a good deal of a man.

"How do you feel now?" inquired Donaldson.

Arsdale hitched forward and resting his chin in his hands, elbows on knees, stared at the floor.

"Like hell," he answered.

Donaldson frowned.

"You deserve to, but you oughtn\'t," he said.

"Oh, I deserve it all right. I deserve it—and more!"

"Yes, you do. But that does n\'t help any."

Arsdale groaned.

"There is n\'t any help. I \'ve made a beastly mess out of my life, out of myself."

"I wish I could disagree, but I can\'t," answered Donaldson.

He walked up and down a moment before the fellow studying him. He was worried and perplexed. The task before him was an unpleasant one. He had to overcome a natural repugnance to interference in the life of another. Under ordinary circumstances he would have watched Arsdale go to his doom with a feeling of nothing but indifference. In his own passion for individual liberty he neither demanded nor accepted sympathy for personal misfortunes or mistakes, and in turn was loath to trespass either upon the rights or duties of another, but his own life, through the medium of the boy\'s sister, was so inextricably entangled with this other that now he recognized the inevitability of such interference. On his success or failure to arouse Arsdale largely depended the happiness of the girl.

"No," he reflected aloud, "the question is n\'t how much punishment you deserve, for the pain you suffer personally does n\'t, unfortunately, remedy matters in the slightest. It wouldn\'t do you any good for me to kick you about the room or I \'d do it. It would n\'t do you any good for me to turn you over to the police or I \'d do that. You \'re hard to get hold of because there\'s so little left of you."

Arsdale made no reply. He remained motionless.

"But," continued Donaldson with emphasis, "that does n\'t make it any the less necessary. You \'ve got to pull what is left together—you \'ve got to play the man with what remains. You can\'t get all the punishment you deserve and so you \'ve got to deserve less. This, not for your own sake, but for the sake of the girl,—for the sake of the girl you struck."

"Don\'t!"

Arsdale quailed. He glanced up at Donaldson with a look that made the latter see again Barstow\'s dog Sandy as he had tottered in his death throes. But the mere fact that the man quivered back from this shameful thing was encouraging. It was upon this alone that Donaldson based his hope, upon this single drop of uncorrupted Arsdale blood which still nourished some tiny spot in the burned out brain.

"You must make such reparation as you can," continued Donaldson. "Your life is n\'t long enough to do it fully, but you can accomplish something towards it if you start at once."

Arsdale shook his head.

"It\'s all a beastly mess. It \'s too late!"

Donaldson\'s lips tightened.

"Well," he asked, "if you are n\'t going to do what you can, what do you propose?"

Thickly Arsdale answered,

"I know a way; I \'m going to pull out for the sake of Elaine!"

Donaldson started as at the cut of a whip-lash. Then he straightened to meet face to face this new development. Somehow this contingency had never occurred to him. Now for the moment it disarmed him, for it brought him down, like a wounded bird, to the level of Arsdale himself. As voiced by the latter the act expressed the climax of simpering cowardice. Donaldson, in the first shock of finding himself included in the same indictment with the very man for whom he had had so little mercy, felt the same powerlessness that had paralyzed this other. He was shorn of his strength. He blinked as stupidly at Arsdale as Arsdale had blinked at him.

But even as he stood with loose lips before the infirm features of the younger man, he realized that Arsdale\'s talk had been the chatter of a child. He had used the phrase idly and, although it was possible he might in just as idle a mood commit the act itself, Donaldson was convinced that it was not yet a fixed idea. With this came the inspiration which gave him a fresh grip upon himself, that revealed his great opportunity; he would make Arsdale see all that he himself had learned in these few days. So in reality he would be giving the best of his life to another.

It was like oxygen to one struggling for breath through congested lungs. He went to the window and in great deep-chested inhalations stood for a moment drinking in not only the fresh air but with it the spirit of the eager, turbulent world which was bathed in it, the world that he now saw so clearly. The sun flashing from the neighboring windows glinted its glad message of life; the rumbling of the passing traffic roared it to him in a thundering message, like that of shattered sea waves; the deep cello-like undernote of the city itself sang it to him. And the message of all the voices was just, "It is good to live! It is good to be!"

He turned back, seeing a new man in the chair before him. Here was a brother—a brother in a truer sense than a better man could have been. Coming from different directions, along different roads, through different temptations, they had reached at last the crumbling edge of the same dark chasm. They faced the same eternal problem. That made them brothers. But Donaldson had already seen, already learned; that made him the stronger brother.

His face was alight, his body alert, as he came to Arsdale\'s side. The latter looked up at him in surprise, feeling his presence before he saw. Donaldson\'s first words stirred him,

"You can\'t pull out," he said, "because you \'re out already. You must pull in. Don\'t you see,—you must pull back!"

"You don\'t understand what I mean."

"A great deal better than you yourself do. And in the light of that understanding I tell you that you can\'t do it,—that it is n\'t the way."

"I \'m no good to any one," Arsdale complained dully. "I don\'t see why it would n\'t be better for everyone if I just quit."

The word quit was a biting gnome to Donaldson.

"I know," he answered. "But it is n\'t right—all because you don\'t know and you can\'t know what you \'re quitting. You can\'t just look around you and see. You wouldn\'t just be quitting the girl who perhaps does n\'t need you, though you can\'t even tell that; you would n\'t be quitting just your friends who can get along without you—though even that is n\'t sure; you \'d be quitting the others, the unseen others, the unknown others, w............