from old associations, and you’ll pardon me for saying it, he’s got to get away from Leila.  She loves him, and is sorry for him, even though we’ve kept from her the knowledge of his fault.  She thinks we are all against him and her sympathy weakens him.  It was the same with her mother, Constance tells me.  She wouldn’t believe that her boy could be anything but perfect, and John Ballard wasn’t strong enough to counteract her influence.  Mary was the only one, and now that it has come to an actual crisis, even Mary blames me for trying to do what I know is best for Barry.  I want to take him over to the other side, cut him away from all that hampers him here, and bring him back to you stronger in fiber and more of a man.”

The General shook his head.  “Perhaps,” he said, “but I can’t bear to think of the hurt heart of my little Leila.”

“They should never have been engaged,” Gordon said, “but it won’t make matters any better to let things go on.  If Leila doesn’t marry Barry, she won’t have to bear the burdens he will surely bring to her.  She’d better be unhappy with you to take care of her, than tied to him and unhappy.”

“But I’m an old man, and she is such a child.  Life for me is so short, and for her so long.”

“We must do what seems best for the moment, and let the future take care of itself.  Barry’s only a boy.  They are neither of them ready for marriage—­a few years of waiting won’t hurt them.”

It was in this strain that Gordon talked to Barry.

“It won’t hurt you to wait.”

“Wait for what?” Barry flamed; “until Leila wears her heart out?  Until you teach her that I’m not—­fit?  Until somebody else comes along and steals her, while I’m gone?”

“Is that the opinion you have of her constancy?”

“No,” Barry said, huskily, “she’s as true as steel.  But I can’t see the use of this, Gordon.  If I marry Leila, she’ll make a man of me.”

“She hasn’t changed you during these last months,” Gordon stated, inexorably, “and you mustn’t run the risk of making her unhappy.  It is a mere business proposition that I am putting before you, Barry.  You must be able to support a wife before you marry one, and Washington isn’t the place for you to start.  In a business like ours, a man must be at his best.  You are wasting your time here, and you’ve acquired the habit of sociability, which is just a habit, but it grows and will end by paralyzing your forces.  A man who’s always ready to be with the crowd isn’t the man that’s ready for work, and he isn’t the man who’s usually onto his job.  I am putting this not from any moral or spiritual ideal, but from the commercial.  The man who wins out isn’t the one with his brain fuddled; he’s the one with his brain clear.  Business to-day is too keen a game for any one to play who isn’t willing to be at it all the time.”

Thus practical common sense met the boy at every turn.  And he was forced at last for pride’s sake to consent to Gordon’s plans for him.  But he had gone to Mary, raging.  “Is he going to run our lives?”