hat seven years, and
remember what you said to me when you stood by my side, toying with
your gun, and looking at me superciliously, as though I were some sort
of curiosity which it amused you to turn inside out.--The one
unforgivable thing in life, you said, was failure. Do you remember
telling me that if I failed I was to swim out on a sunny day--to swim
and swim until the end came? Do you remember telling me that death was
sometimes a pleasant thing, but that life after failure was Hell
itself?"

Rochester nodded.

"I always had such a clear insight into life," he murmured. "I was
perfectly right."

"From your point of view you doubtless were," Saton answered. "You
were a cynic and a pessimist, and I find you now unchanged. I went
away with your words ringing in my brain. It was the first poisonous
thought which had ever entered there, and I never lost it. I said to
myself that whatever price I paid for success, success of some sort I
would gain. When things went against me, I seemed to hear always those
bitter, supercilious words. I could even see the curl of your lips as
you looked down upon me, and figured to yourself the only possible
result of trusting me, an unfledged, imaginative boy, with the means
to carve his way a little further into the world. Failure! I wrote the
word out of the dictionary of my life. Sin, crime, ill-doing of any
sort if they became necessary--I kept them there. But failure--no! And
this was your doing. Now you come to ask me questions. You want to
know if I am a fit and proper person to receive in your house. Perhaps
I have sinned. Perhaps I have robbed. Perhaps I have proved myself a
master in every form of ill-doing. But I have not failed! I have paid
you back your five hundred pounds."

"The question of ethics," Rochester remarked, "interests me very
little if at all. The only point is that whereas on the hillside you
were simply a stray unit of humanity, and the things which we said to
one another concerned ourselves only, here matters are a little
different. In a thoughtless moment, I asked you to become a guest
under my roof. It was, I frankly admit, a mistake. I trust that I need
not say more."

"If you will have my things removed to the Inn," Saton said slowly--

"No such extreme measures are necessary," Rochester answered. "You
will stay with us until to-morrow morning. After luncheon you will
probably find it convenient to terminate your visit as soon as
possible."