He spoke of nothing else that day, and Beryl basked in reflected approval. Her father knew nothing. He wondered why Ronnie, whom he did not like overmuch, called with greater frequency. He had too large an experience of life to harbor any misconception as to his second cousin's private character, although he would, in other circumstances, have passively accepted him as a son-in-law. Men take a very tolerant view of other men's weaknesses. The theory that the world holds a patch of arable land reserved for young men to put under wild oats, and that without exciting the honest farmers whose lands adjoin, is a theory that dies hard as the cultivated fields increase in number. He did not regard Ronnie as a marrying man, and with the exception of a few moments of uneasiness he had had when he noted Beryl's preference for his associate's society, he found nothing objectionable in the new interest which Ronnie had found. But he wished he wouldn't call so often. Dr. Merville might, and did, dismiss Ronnie's errant adventures with a philosophical _sua cuique voluptas_--he found himself taking a more and more lenient view of Ronald Morelle's character. A man is never himself until he is idle. Successions of nurses, schoolmasters and professors shepherd him into the service of his fellows, and the conventions of his profession, no less than a natural desire to stand well with the friends and clients he has acquired in his progress, assist him in maintaining something of the appearance and mental attitude which his tutors have formed in him. Many a man has gone through life being some other man who has impressed him, or some great teacher who has imparted his personality into his plastic pupil. The first instinct of a man lost in the desert is to discard his clothes. The doctor, wandering in this financial waste, began to discard his principles. He was unconscious of the sacrifice. If, in the course of his professional life he had made a mistaken diagnosis, or blundered in an operation, he would have known. If at school he had committed some error, he would have been corrected. Now, though this he did not realize, he was, for the first time in his life, free from any other authority than his own will and conscience. He fell into a common error when he believed, as he did, that standards of honor and behavior are peculiar to the trades in which they are exercised and that right and wrong are adaptable to circumstances. "Ronnie is coming to dinner tonight, isn't he? You know I shall not be here, my dear? I promised Steppe I would spend the evening with him. I wish you would tell Ronnie how pleased we all are at his very fine speech. I never dreamed that he had it in him--Steppe talks of making him chairman of the company." "I thought he was that." "No--er--no. The chairman is a man named Howitt--a very troublesome fellow. Steppe bought him out before the meeting. Ronnie was only acting chairman."