This
town is full of men who have done wrong and haven't paid for it."
"That's one of your fool socialist theories." James spoke sharply
and irritably. "No man's guilty till the law says so. They haven't
been in the penitentiary. He has. That's what damns me if it gets
out."
Jeff laid a hand affectionately on his cousin's shoulder. "Don't
you believe it for a moment. There's no moral distinction between
the man who has paid and the man who hasn't paid for his sins
toward society. There is good and there is bad in all of us,
closely intertwined, knit together into the very warp and woof of
our lives. We're all good and we're all bad."
It was with James a purely personal equation. He could not forget
its relation to himself.
"My name is to be voted on at the University Club next month. I'll
be blackballed to a dead certainty," he said miserably.
"Probably, if the story gets out. It's tough, I know." Jeff's eyes
gleamed angrily. "And why should they? You're just as good a man
to-day as you were yesterday. But there's nothing so fettering, so
despicable as good form. It blights. Let a man bow down to the
dead hand of custom and he can never again be true to what he
thinks and knows.
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