“Then why in the name of sense don't you keep straight?”
“I resolve to, and then go and get drunk against my will. You don't know what it's like.”
Philip regarded him sadly. There was a heavy melancholy in the boy's whole attitude that distressed him—a spirit as of dumb submission to the inevitable. It was only lifted when he indulged in his wild bursts of grief.
“What's the good!” Lester continued. “I can keep up for a day or two, but I go back to it every time.”
Philip shrugged his shoulders, saying with a poor attempt at lightness: “I suppose one should not resist the flesh. Our most virtuous moments are those which come when we have tired the devil out within us and are basking in the splendor of the good resolutions that tread upon the heels of satiety.” He would have given anything to recall the words once they were spoken, for Lester shrank from him.
“I didn't think you would talk to me so—not now,” he said.
There was the dull glint of anger in his lack-luster eyes, but it faded away almost immediately. Once more he became stupidly quiet.
“Forgive me,” Philip ventured penitently. “I didn't mean to wound you.”
“It's all right,” Lester said indifferently. “It's all right. I presume you are thoroughly sick of me.
“No, I am not. I'd like to help you if I knew how, but you don't tell me what your trouble is. It's blind guessing with me. I don't know how to give you a lift.”
“It's too late, I tell you. I'm done for.”
“Do you mind explaining just what you mean?”
“I've squandered what should have lasted me a lifetime. I am a bankrupt in brain, body and purse. My God!”—with a gesture eloquent of despair and misery—“I've ruined myself! There is nothing left for me but death.”
And Philip, understanding something of the other's need, said: “It's not so bad as that. You can pull yourself around, but if it's as you declare it to be, you can't be too quick about it.”
“The doctors say not. It's all up with me according to them.”
“There, Philip, don't—don't let's discuss it. I am not afraid, but it's terrible. I have thought I had years and years before me, and they were all wasted in a day.”
To his horror Philip saw that his friend was in a measure reconciled to death. This to a pagan like Philip, was incomprehensible.