To Merrick, clear-eyed in spite of his fondness for her, came a flash of insight that told him she had been wiser than he. He could never mould this wildling to his heart’s desire. Some day he would look back on this episode and smile at it. But he had not reached that state of philosophy yet. His vanity was still engaged, and more than that--the last passionate flame of the boy in him that was being sacrificed to ambition. He craved inordinately the willful charm of this devastatingly sweet girl with the quick, disturbing eyes. She represented to him certain values he was deliberately trampling down, not because they did not seem to him good, but because they warred with something that he wanted more. He had impossibly dreamed that she might stay what she was and yet become something different. “Are you going to marry Hollister?” he asked. She might reasonably have told him this was a private matter of her own. She might have evaded the question. Instead, she told him the truth. “I don’t know.” “Has he asked you?” “No.” “But you will if he does.” “Yes.” “Knowing what he has been, what he may be again?” “Knowing what he is,” she corrected. “Will girls never get over the folly of marrying men to reform them?” he flung out impatiently. “I’m not marrying him to reform him--that is, if I’m marrying him at all, which isn’t likely. He does not need reforming.” “How do you know he won’t slide back into his vice?” He answered his own query. “You can’t know. There’s no way of knowing.” “He won’t.” She said it quietly, with absolute conviction. Her attitude tremendously irritated him. It was a reflection on all the copybook virtues that had made him what he was. “Are you waiting for this tramp, this drug fiend, to make up his mind whether he wants to marry you or not?” There was a spark of anger in her eye. She would not modify even his phrasing. It could stand as he put it. “Yes.” “Sheer perversity.” “Isn’t it?” she agreed, with dangerous sweetness. He knew he was being punished for having indulged himself, as he rarely did, in a display of temper. At once he took himself in hand. “I’m serious about this, Betty. A girl has no right to take chances of this sort. I grant you Hollister has qualities--splendid ones. But the damning fact remains.” Betty relented. He was human. He had cried out because he was hurt. “I don’t think it remains, Justin. I’m absolutely convinced that it’s conquered--what you call his vice.” “What I call his vice! Wouldn’t every sane person call it that?” “Not if they knew the circumstances. He was left with terrible pains in the head after he was wounded. They gave him morphine--a lot of it. He got to depending on it. The habit grew on him. Then he woke up and shook it off. It’s to his credit rather than the reverse.” “Even so. There’s a danger that he’ll go back to it.” And again she denied it, with the certainty of one who does not need evidence to bulwark an absolute assurance. “No danger at all.”