“Boots!  I—­I—­”

“Go on!”

“I’m not going to swear; I’m only hurt, Boots—­”

“Sure you are!  Medicine’s working, that’s all.  We strive to please, we kill to cure.  Of course it hurts, man!  But you know it will do you good; you know what I say is true.  You’ve no right to club the natural and healthy inclinations out of yourself.  The day for fanatics and dippy, dotty flagellants is past.  Fox’s martyrs are out of date.  The man who grabs life in both fists and twists the essence out of it, counts.  He is living as he ought to, he is doing the square thing by his country and his community—­by every man, woman, and child in it!  He’s giving everybody, including himself, a square deal.  But the man who has been upper-cut and floored, and who takes the count, and then goes and squats in a corner to brood over the fancy licks that Fate handed him—­he isn’t dealing fairly and squarely by his principles or by a decent and generous world that stands to back him for the next round.  Is he, Phil?”

“Do you mean to say, Boots, that you think a man who has made the ghastly mess of his life that I have, ought to feel free to marry?”

“Think it!  Man, I know it.  Certainly you ought to marry if you wish—­but, above all, you ought to feel free to marry.  That is the essential equipment of a man; he isn’t a man if he feels that he isn’t free to marry.  He may not want to do it, he may not be in love.  That’s neither here nor there; the main thing is that he is as free as a man should be to take any good opportunity—­and marriage is included in the list of good opportunities.  If you become a slave to morbid notions, no wonder you are depressed.  Slaves usually are.  Do you want to slink through life?  Then shake yourself, I tell you; learn to understand that you’re free to do what any decent man may do.  That will take the morbidness out of you.  That will colour life for you.  I don’t say go hunting for some one to love; I do say, don’t avoid her when you meet her.”

“You preach a very gay sermon, Boots,” he said, folding his arms.  “I’ve heard something similar from my sister.  As a matter of fact I think you are partly right, too; but if the inclination for the freedom you insist I take is wanting, then what?  I don’t wish to marry, Boots; I am not in love, therefore the prospect of home and kids is premature and vague, isn’t it?”

“As long as it’s a prospect or a possibility I don’t care how vague it is,” said the other cordially.  “Will you admit it’s a possibility?  That’s all I ask.”

“If it will please you, yes, I will admit it.  I have altered certain ideas, Boots; I cannot, just now, conceive of any circumstances under which I should feel justified in marrying, but such circumstances might arise; I’ll say that much.”

Yet until that moment he had not dreamed of admitting as much to anybody, even to himself; but Lansing’s logic, his own loneliness, his disappointment in Gerald, had combined to make him doubt his own methods of procedure.  Too, the interview with Alixe Ruthven had not only knocked all complacency and conceit out of him, but had made him so self-distrustful that he was in a mood to listen respectfully to his peers on any question.