He laid his hands in hers, smiling a little at his own earnestness.

“Alarmist?  No!  The younger set are better than those who bred them; and if, in time, they, too, fall short, they will not fall as far as their parents.  And, in their turn, when they look around them at the younger set whom they have taught in the light and wisdom of their own shortcomings, they will see fresher, sweeter, lovelier young people than we see now.  And it will continue so, dear, through the jolly generations.  Life is all right, only, like art, it is very, very long sometimes.”

“Good out of evil, Phil?” asked his sister, smiling; “innocence from the hotbeds of profligacy? purity out of vulgarity? sanity from hideous ostentation?  Is that what you come preaching?”

“Yes; and isn’t it curious!  Look at that old harridan, Mrs. Sanxon Orchil!  There are no more innocent and charming girls in Manhattan than her daughters.  She knew enough to make them different; so does the majority of that sort.  Look at the Cardwell girl and the Innis girl and the Craig girl!  Look at Mrs. Delmour-Carnes’s children!  And, Nina—­even Molly Hatpin’s wastrel waif shall never learn what her mother knows if Destiny will help Madame Molly ever so little.  And I think that Destiny is often very kind—­even to the Hatpin offspring.”

Nina sat silent on the padded arm of her chair, looking up at her brother.

“Mad preacher!  Mad Mullah!—­dear, dear fellow!” she said tenderly; “all ills of the world canst thou discount, but not thine own.”

“Those, too,” he insisted, laughing; “I had a talk with Boots—­but, anyway, I’d already arrived at my own conclusion that—­that—­I’m rather overdoing this blighted business—­”

“Phil!”—­in quick delight.

“Yes,” he said, reddening nicely; “between you and Boots and myself I’ve decided that I’m going in for—­for whatever any man is going in for—­life!  Ninette, life to the full and up to the hilt for mine!—­not side-stepping anything. . . .  Because I—­because, Nina, it’s shameful for a man to admit to himself that he cannot make good, no matter how thoroughly he’s been hammered to the ropes.  And so I’m starting out again—­not hunting trouble like him of La Mancha—­but, like him in this, that I shall not avoid it. . . .  Is that plain to you, little sister?”

“Yes, oh, yes, it is!” she murmured; “I am so happy, so proud—­but I knew it was in your blood, Phil; I knew that you were merely hurt and stunned—­badly hurt, but not fatally!—­you could not be; no weaklings come from our race.”

“But still our race has always been law-abiding—­observant of civil and religious law.  If I make myself free again, I take some laws into my own hands.”.

“How do you mean?” she asked.

“Well,” he said grimly, “for example, I am forbidden, in some States, to marry again—­”

“But you know there was no reason for that!”