On a stair landing half-way to the street he sat down
and cried into his arms folded upon his knees. When he returned to his
room he had a sudden return of his dreadful nervous malady and barked
and whined under the bed.
Then Vandover wrote a fifty-dollar check on the bank--the same bank that
had just notified him that he was overdrawn--and passed it upon young
Haight. How he came to do the thing he could not tell; it might have
been the influence of Geary's successful robbery, or it might have been
that he had at last lost all principle, all sense of honour and
integrity. At any rate, he could not bring himself to feel very sorry.
He knew that young Haight would not prosecute him for the dishonesty; he
traded upon Haight's magnanimity; he only felt glad that he had the
fifty dollars. But by this time Vandover did not even wonder at his own
baseness and degradation. A few years ago this would have been the case;
now his character was so changed that the theft seemed somehow
consistent. He had destroyed young Haight's friendship for him. He had
cast from him his college chum, his best friend, but neither did this
affect him.
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