But I was not yet a better man.

I was only, that morning, beginning to become one, and it had taken a phone call about a four-pound stranger to start.

And I have wondered, in the time since, how many men never get that phone call, or get it and let it ring, and go on to the ends of their lives never learning what I learned that morning in a boardroom with a pen in my hand: that when the choice between everything you have built and someone you are meant to love finally arrives, undisguised, in a single ringing moment, the whole of your character is nothing more or less than which one you stand up for.

I nearly stood up for the contract.