“I want to live,” he said simply. “I don’t want to die. I can’t feel that I have any less right to live than you. Perhaps the criminals and paralytics can’t feel that either. I never feel unfit; I never knew that there was anything wrong about me till other people told me so. When I was a boy the world was a beautiful place to me; it would be so still if there were no good people in it. It is they who will not let me live. You are only saying to me in more honest language what they have been saying to me, what my own mother has been saying to me, ever since I can remember. I don’t know why I am condemned. Ever since I was a boy I have loved beautiful things as other men love gold; I have walked through life with my eyes fixed on the stars, and my feet tripped up by every ditch. My mother thinks that I am wicked, and you say that I am diseased. And to me--yes, to me--you all seem blind people burrowing in the earth and refusing to be happy.” Vanbrugh shook his head. “I am not responsible for what others have said to you. In my eyes you are simply a victim of heredity. I do not want my daughter’s children to be victims in their turn; that is all. If you love her----” “I do love her,” Alistair interrupted fiercely. “I thought you understood. I only want now to know what I can do for her sake. If I were a Catholic, I would go into a monastery, so as to leave her free. That is the last word of Christianity for a man like me. The last word of science is the lethal chamber.” Sir Bernard had an inspiration. “Why don’t you go back to Molly Finucane?” Alistair fell back in his chair as if he had received a blow. He woke out of his dream. Sir Bernard was right, and his mother had been wrong. He had no business to unite his wrecked career with such a life as Hero Vanbrugh’s. Molly Finucane was the true match for him. She was a scapegoat like himself. The figure of the poor little painted creature had haunted his memory even during these last days of courtship, and he had never felt quite satisfied that he had acted honourably in leaving her. He rose to his feet. “Yes,” he said, “I can do that. That will set Hero free. Good-bye, Sir Bernard. I am going back to London to marry Molly Finucane.” CHAPTER XIX POETS’ CORNER THE September sun was shining on Beers Cooperage, shining as brightly on the dingy London yard as on the glittering emerald seas of France.