The offer is something of a surprise to him, in the way an entirely new sentence sometimes catches you off guard, and Watson is startled enough to give a puff of laughter, and then pauses as it occurs to him that laughter alone could seem insulting. "I daresay that's an offer no one's made me before. Not at the moment, my friend."

He had been very close, for a moment. He wipes at his eyes.

"And yes, he absolved me and let me go and I'm still sitting here with the guilt. I suppose I always will. Damn it." The last comes out in a sort of gasp, and he takes a drink of his port.