"I do ask it.... Will you?"

"If I wanted to I couldn't, and I don't want to. I prefer this hell
to the other."

"Won't you make a fight for it?"

"No!" he said brutally.

The girl bent her head again over her knitting. But her white
fingers remained idle. After a long while, staring at her intently,
he saw her lip quiver.

"Don't do that!" he broke out harshly. "What the devil do you care?"

Then she lifted her tragic white face. And he had his answer.

"My God!" he faltered, springing to his feet. "What's the matter
with you? Why do you care? You can't care! What is it to you that a
drunken beast slinks back into hell again? Do you think you are
Samaritan enough to follow him and try to drag him out by the
ears?... A man whose very brain is already cracking with it all--a
burnt-out thing with neither mind nor manhood left--"

She got to her feet, trembling and deathly white.

"I can't let you go," she whispered.

Exasperation almost strangled him and set afire his unhinged brain.