"Why, I think I do," said Langdon; "in fact, I now _know_ it; if I didn’t, why should I be here miserable enough to die about what has happened and her later treatment of me?" "I couldn’t take your diagnosis of your particular malady." Sively puffed thoughtfully at his cigar. "You’d be the last person, really, that could decide on that. There are some men in the world who can’t tell the difference between love and passion, and they are led to the altar by one as often as the other. But the passion-led man has walked through the pink gates of hell. When his temporary desire has been fed, he’ll look into the face of his bride with absolute loathing and contempt. She’ll be too pure, as a rule, to understand the chasm between them, but she will know that for her, at least, marriage is a failure. Now, if I thought you really loved that pretty girl—if I thought you really were man enough to devote the rest of your days to blotting from her memory the black events of that night; if I thought you’d go to her with the hot blood of hell out of your veins, and devote yourself to winning her just as some young man on her own social level would do, paying her open and respectful attentions, declaring your honorable intentions to her relatives and friends—if I thought you were man enough to do that, in spite of the opposition of your father and mother, then I’d glory in your spunk, and I’d think more of you, my poor boy, than I ever have in all my life." Langdon leaned forward. He had felt his cousin’s contemptuous words less for the hope they embodied. "Then you think if I did that, she might—" "I don’t know what _she’d_ do," Sively broke in. "I only know that when you finally saw her after that night and made no declarations of honorable intentions, that you simply emphasized the cold-blooded insult of what had already happened. She saw in your following her up only a desire to repeat the conduct which had so nearly entrapped her. My boy, I am not a mean judge of women, and I am afraid you have simply lost that girl forever. She has lowered herself, as she perhaps looks at it, in the eyes of another woman—the one who saved her—and her young eyes have been torn open to things she was too pure and unsuspecting even to dream of. However, all her life she has heard of the misfortune of this Mrs. Boyd, and she now realizes only too vividly what she has escaped. It might take you years to restore her confidence—to prove to her that you love her for herself alone, but if I stood in your shoes I’d do it if it took me a lifetime. She is worth it, my boy. In fact, I’m afraid she is—now pardon me for being so blunt—but I’m afraid she is superior to you in intellect. She struck me as being a most wonderful woman for her age. Given opportunity, she’d perhaps out-strip you. It is strange that she has had so little attention paid to her. Has she never had an admirer before?"