Humphrey considered this without a smile. 'I don't see exactly how, Hen.' 'I mean if he's been heedless and reckless--oh, you know, girls, debts, everything. Just crazy, sorta.' 'Well, I suppose a man can reform. Were you a very bad lot?' The wrinkled smile was reassuring. 'That depends on what you--I wasn't exactly sporty, but--oh, you don't know the trouble I've had, Humphrey. Then my mother died, and I hadn't been half-decent to her, and I was left alone, and my uncle had to pay my debts out of the principal--it was hundreds of dollars----' His voice died out. There was an element of pathos in the picture before him that Humphrey recognised with some sympathy--the gloomy lad of twenty, with that absurd little moustache that he couldn't let alone. After all, he _had_ been rather put to it. It began to appear that he had suppressed himself without mercy. There would doubtless be reactions. Perhaps explosions. Henry went on:-- 'I don't know what's happened to me. I don't feel right about things. I'--he hesitated, glanced up, then down, and his ears reddened--'I've been going with Martha Caldwell, you know. For a long time.' Humphrey nodded. 'Mondays and Thursdays I go over there, and other times. I don't seem to want to go any more. But I get mixed up about it. I--I don't want them to say I'm fickle. They used to say it.' 'You've evidently got gifts,' observed Humphrey, as if thinking aloud. 'You've got some fire in you. The trouble with you now, of course, is that you're stale.' Humphrey deliberately considered the situation, then remarked: 'You asked me if a man can change his nature. I begin to see now. You've been trying to do that to yourself, for quite a while.' Henry nodded. 'Well, I suppose you'll find that you can't do it. Not quite that. The fire that's in you isn't going to stop burning just because you tell it to.' 'But what's a fellow to do?' 'I don't know. Just stick along, I suppose, gradually build up experience until you find work you can let yourself go in. Some way, of course, you've got to let yourself go, sooner or later.' Henry, his eyes nervously alert now, his slim young body tense, was drawing jerkily with his fork on the coarse table-cloth. 'Yes,' he broke out, with the huskiness in his voice that came when his emotions pressed--'yes, but what if you can't let yourself go without letting everything go? What if the fire bums you!' Humphrey found it difficult to frame a reply. He got no further, this as they were leaving the restaurant, than to say, 'Of course, one man can't advise another.' 5 As they were turning into the _Voice_ office, Henry caught sight of Mamie Wilcox, in a cheap pink dress and flapping pink-and-white hat, loitering by the hotel. He fell back behind Humphrey. Mamie beckoned with her head. He nodded, and entered the office; and she moved slowly on around the corner of the avenue.