“Well I try to be square,” said Doctor Harmon, “but that is where Langston has me beaten a mile. I have to try. He doesn't. He was born that way.” The Girl began to laugh. “His environment is so different,” she said. “Perhaps if he were in a big city, he would have to try also.” “Won't do!” said the doctor. “He chose his location. So did I. He is a stronger physical man than I ever was or ever will be. The struggle that bound him to the woods and to research, that made him the master of forces that give back life, when a man like Carey says it is the end, proves him a master. The tumult in his soul must have been like a cyclone in his forest, when he turned his back on the world and stuck to the woods. Carey told me about it. Some day you must hear. It's a story a woman ought to know in order to arrive at proper values. You never will understand the man until you know that he is clean where most of us are blackened with ugly sins we have no right on God's footstool to commit and not so much reason as he. Every man should be as he is, but very few are. Carey says Langston's mother was a wonderful element in the formation of his character; but all mothers are anxious, and none of them can build with no foundation and no soul timber. She had material for a man to her hand, or she couldn't have made one.” “I see what you mean.” “So far as any inexperienced girl ever sees,” said the doctor. “Some day if you live to fifty you will know, but you can't comprehend it now.” “If you think I lived all my life in Chicago's poverty spots and don't know unbridled human nature!” “I found you and your mother unusually innocent women. You may understand some things. I hope you do. It will help you to decide who is the real man among the men who come into your life. There are some men, Ruth, who are fit to mate with a woman, and to perpetuate themselves and their mental and moral forces in children, who will be like them, and there are others who are not. It is these 'others' who are responsible for the sin of the world, the sickness and suffering. Any time you are sure you have a chance at a moral man, square and honest, in control of his brain and body, if you are a wise woman, Ruth, stick to him as the limpet to the rock.” “You mean stick to the Harvester?” “If you are a wise woman!” “When was a woman ever wise?” “A few have been. They are the only care-free, really happy ones of the world, the only wives without a big, poison, blue-bottle fly in their ointment.” “I detest flies!” said the Girl. “So do I,” said the doctor. “For this reason I say to you choose the ointment that never had one in it. Take the man who is 'master of his fate, captain of his soul.' Stick to the Harvester! He is infinitely the better man!” “Well have you seen anything to indicate that I wasn't sticking?” asked the Girl. “No. And for your sake I hope I never will.” She laughed softly. “You do love him, Ruth?”