He was very excited. He said no word of his own doubts. He said no word of his vast sacrifice which his unproved convictions had forced upon him. He could have become rich in the practice of medicine. No one knew this better than Conrad Westerling. No one more than this Jew of sensitive family and depleted means loved the luxury and the freedom of money. All his life he would labor at an insignificant salary because of the depth of his sense of service. A true poet of Science. But of all this he said no word. He could not. To one person he needed to say all this: the person he loved, to Helen. But until she said that she loved him, he could not even to her. The strategy of showing his better self, of gaining her allegiance to his cause in order to help win her, was beyond him. Speaking stridently and harshly now, it was his need of tenderness and his deep respect for the tenderness of Helen, that spoke. The Daindries could not know this, could not quite conceal their shrinking from him. It was not a question of right, it was a matter of taste. A too passionate devotion to an ideal was an untoward display, it was out of place: quite as would be a too naked display of devotion to a woman. This stern stiff man was at work perhaps wiping away an entailed incubus upon the life of man, but he lacked amenity. Their nerves told them this. Their minds hinted that he had intellect and courage. But like all proper people, what their nerves ordered came first. David had liked his words. They excited him. He had understood them less than Mr. Daindrie or than Helen. But he had visioned more. What came in to him was precisely the personal anguish, the personal immolation--though he could not configure them beneath his antagonizing words. He saw also Helen’s shrinking from the violence of those words: as if they laid hands on her, threatened to exclude all others and possess her. It seemed that Helen did not want to be possessed by truth. It must be something warmer, something smaller perhaps, that would possess her. So David felt the true content of Westerling’s words. They held a burden of great courage, a plea of love: these he was really offering to her: these she would not accept. David walked a few blocks to the car with Westerling. He held out his hand. “I like what you said at dinner, oh--so much, Doctor!” He wanted to say far more. “Do you?” Westerling looked sourly, haughtily at him, as if David were trying to hurt him. With a stiff body too erect he shook David’s hand--dropped it with a gesture of completion. “Good-night.” So David could not go on. But he went to Cornelia, to whom he knew he could speak. “I don’t think,” he said, “I am going back ever again to see Miss Daindrie.”