now--what would she do after she had learned? Yet he must do this to
be a free man, to be even a free spirit. There must be no more shadows
between them, not even shadows of the past.

"I told you," he said, "of my life up to the time I came to New York,
of the daily grind it was to get that far. That was only the
beginning--after that came the real struggle. It was easy to fight
with the enemy in front--with something for your fists to strike
against. But then came the waiting years. I was too blind to see all
the work that lay around me. I was too selfish to see what I might
have fought for. I saw nothing except the wasting months. I lost my
grip. I played the coward."

He took a quick, sharp breath at the word. It was like plunging a
knife into his own heart to stand before her and say that.

"One day in the laboratory," he struggled on, "Barstow told me of a
poison which would not kill until the end of seven days. Because I was
not--the best kind of fighter--I--stole it and swallowed it. That was
a week ago. I am here now only because the poison did n't work."

"You--you tried to kill yourself?" she cried in amazement.

"Yes," he answered unflinchingly, "I tried to quit. There were many
things I wanted--cheap, trivial things, and at the time I did n't see
my course clear to getting them in any other way. The other
things--the things worth while were around me all the time, but I could
n't see them."

He paused. She drew away from him.

"So you see I did not do bravely. I wanted you to know this from the
first, but there didn't seem to be any way. I did n't want to stand
before you as a liar--as a hypocrite, and yet I did n't want to balk
myself in the little good I found myself able to do. That silence was
part of the penalty. I left you yesterday without telling, for the
same reason. That and one other: because I did n't want you to think
me a coward when death might cut off all opportunity for ever proving
otherwise."

Again he paused, hoping against a dead hope. But she stood there,
cringing away from him, her frightened lips dumb.

"That is all," he concluded. "Now I will go. But don't you see that I
had to intrude long enough to tell you this? I stand absolutely honest
before you. There isn't a lie in me. Now I am going to work."

He made an odd looking picture as he stood there. Haggard, hot-eyed,
with a touch of color above his unshaven cheeks, he was like a
victoriou