What merit lay in performing an easy obligation?
What courage was required to keep a promise easily kept?
If he cared anything for her--if he really cared for Gerald, he owed them more than effortless fulfilment.

And here there could be no fulfilment without effort, without the discarding from self of the last rags of pride.

And even then, what hope was there--after the sacrifice of self and the disregard of almost certain humiliation?
It was horribly hard for him; there seemed to be no chance in sight.

But forlorn hope was slowly rousing the soldier in him--the grim, dogged, desperate necessity of doing his duty to the full and of leaving consequences to that Destiny, which some call by a name more reverent.
So first of all, when at length he had decided, he nerved himself to strike straight at the centre; and within the hour he found Gerald at the Stuyvesant Club.
The boy descended to the visitors' rooms, Selwyn's card in his hand and distrust written on every feature.

And at Selwyn's first frank and friendly words he reddened to the temples and checked him.
"I won't listen," he said.