let anybody off. He was so brave—he died doing what he said he’d do.”

Phil was glad he had thrown away the newspaper that hinted of Dick’s gay evening in the bar—one of many gay evenings that Phil had known of in the past few months. He was relieved that was over, because Dick’s weakness had threatened the happiness of the girl he loved; but he was terribly sorry for him—even understanding how it was necessary for him to turn his maladjustment to life toward one mischief or another—but he was wise enough to leave Julia with the dream that she had saved out of wreckage.

There was a bad moment a year later, just before their marriage, when she said:

“You’ll understand the feeling I have and always will have about Dick, won’t you, Phil? It wasn’t just his good looks. I believed in him—and I was right in a way. He broke rather than bent; he was a ruined man, but not a bad man. In my heart I knew when I first looked at him.”

Phil winced, but he said nothing. Perhaps there was more behind it than they knew. Better let it all alone in the depths of her heart and the depths of the sea.

Published in The Saturday Evening Post magazine (4 July 1931).