He had delivered this harangue with his old fervour and declamatory gestures, and when he had ended he flung himself into an armchair and wiped his brow with his handkerchief. Suddenly he started again to his feet and seized a folded folio document lying on the table.
“See,” said he. “I've been down to Higginson the solicitor this morning, and executed a deed of gift, making the whole thing over to you, less the legacy duty. For Heaven's sake, take it and let me feel an honest man again.”
Sylvester read through the document. Then he folded it up and put it in his pocket.
“The three thousand I'll take,” he said. “The remainder, with your permission, I'll give to the Prisoners' Aid Society; my father took a keen interest in it.”
“Anything, so long as I don't touch it,” said Roderick, lighting another cigarette. “Ha! Now I feel free, and can take up the threads of life again. By the way, when you go, think as charitably of my father as you can. I've done with him for ever and ever, but I've explained him to myself. He is a perfect type of the non-moral being, the instinctive criminal. There's a family history which you as a physician would find interesting. To me as a poor devil of an artist, it is a bogey which only walks abroad in the night of my mind. I suppose I have a share in the family taint, but as I hope never to propagate my species, it will die with me.”
He rattled on in his vehement way, and once more Sylvester fell under the spell of his exuberant personality, preferring to listen than to speak. Roderick launched out into a forecast of his future. He would forswear sack, he repeated, and live cleanly, with Art for his chaste mistress. “I got an idea for a picture, this morning, that is going to revolutionise my existence,” said he. Sylvester's acceptance of the deed of gift was like the removal of a heavy stone that had held prisoner his elvish spirit. And the more he approached the Roderick of six months ago, the more did Sylvester wonder at the nature of the man. Yet his pocket held irrefutable proof of the man's sincerity. At last he rose and held out his hand. Roderick looked at him, and looked at the hand in astonishment; then he strode a pace forward and grasped it eagerly.