Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/408

 "I feel hard," Henry bit out uncompromisingly.

"Naturally," conceded his caller, swallowing contritely; "but perhaps you won't feel so bitter when I tell you how horrified and ashamed I am at finding out what wrongs I did you."

"Ha! You admit that?" Henry exulted, rather in spite of himself, but with an implacable light in his stern gray eyes.

Boland wavered on his legs, not knowing how to go on. He was nonplused by such hardness. Why, this was as hard as he could have been in his own hardest days. He could make no impression—get no start with a real confession of fault. How was he to get over to this rightly outraged young man that he was a changed Two Blades now, a contrite, broken-shelled Two Blades, secking his own merely that he might right the wrongs that he had done with it before.

"I—I wanted to have a little talk with you," he stammered, and his face filled with yearning. "I—I" His voice broke as he passed over everything else to blurt out his one great objective—his now dearest hope: "Harrington, I—I wanted to ask you to be receiver of Boland General!"

Harrington only started, then laughed bitterly, almost mockingly. "Me? Receiver of Boland General? Ha, ha! That's a hot one! Ha, ha!" And yet there had been circumstances in which this would have seemed a marvelous, a grateful triumph to him. It was the very triumph he had looked forward to. "No. That would be impossible!" he declared with finality.

"Why?" persisted his petitioner, and persisted with a manner so damply abject that Henry felt that in justice to his own humanity he must give an answer.