"Damn it, Boz," he summed his grievances, "it comes precisely to this: You're playing dog in the manger here. By your attitude, by every kind of sneaking suggestion, you poison Susan's mind against me. Hang it, I'm not vain--but at least I'm presentable, and I've been called amusing. Other women have found me so. And to speak quite frankly, it isn't every man in my position who would offer marriage to a girl whose father----" "I'd stop there, Maltby, if I were you!" "My dear man, you and I are above such prejudices, of course! But it's only common sense to acknowledge that they exist. Susan's the most infernally seductive accident that ever happened on this middle-class planet! But all the same, there's a family history back of her that not one man in fifty would be able to forget. My point is, that with all her seduction, physical and mental, she's not in the ordinary sense marriageable. And it's the ordinary sense of such things that runs the world." "Well----" "Well--there you are! I offer her far more than she could reasonably hope for; or you for her. I'm well fixed, I know everybody worth knowing; I can give her a good time, and I can help her to a career. It strikes me that if you had Susan's good at heart, you'd occasionally suggest these thing's to her--even urge them upon her. As her guardian you must have some slight feeling of responsibility?" "None whatever." "What!" "None whatever--so far as Susan's deeper personal life is concerned. That is her affair, not mine." "Then you'd be satisfied to have her throw herself away?" "If she insisted, yes. But Susan's not likely to throw herself away." "Oh, isn't she! Let me tell you this, Boz, once for all: You're in love with the girl yourself, and though you may not know it, you've no intention of letting anyone else have a chance." "Well," I flashed, "if you were in my shoes--would _you_?" The vulgarity of our give and take did not escape me, but in my then state of rage I seemed powerless to escape vulgarity. I revelled in vulgarity. It refreshed me. I could have throttled Maltby, and I am quite certain he was itching to throttle me. We were both longing to throttle Phil. Indeed, we almost leaped at him as he stopped in the hall doorway to toss us an unnaturally gruff good night. "Where's Susan?" I demanded. "In your study," Phil mumbled, hunching into his overcoat; "she's waiting to see you." Then he seized his shapeless soft hat and--the good old phrase best describes it--made off. "She's got to see me first!" Maltby hurled at me, coarsely, savagely, as he started past. I grabbed his arm and held him. It thrilled me to realize how soft he was for all his bulk, to feel that physically I was the stronger. "Wait!" I said. "This sort of thing has gone far enough. We'll stop _grovelling_--if you don't mind! If we can't give Susan something better than this, we've been cheating her. It's a pity she ever left Birch Street."