"Absolutely," said Dyker. Like most lawyers of his generation, his ideas of what was right were limited only by the final decisions of what was legal, and if the Supreme Court of the United States had, by even a majority of one, declared that the sun moved around the earth, Dyker would have first denied and then forgotten all previous astronomy. "Absolutely," he repeated, and awaited her capitulation. But Marian did not capitulate. She merely drew a long breath and answered: "After all, that, of course, is just a small portion of the big question, and the only way it moves me is to lessen my opinion of the Supreme Court." It was Wesley's turn to gasp, and he did so. He had always suspected that these college-settlements were hotbeds of Socialism and Anarchy--two theories that, to Dyker, were one and the same--and now he had his confirmation. He was too cynically wrong upon one side of their subject to realize how emotionally wrong she, in her hope of accomplishment through personal appeal, might be upon the other. But here was a concrete denial of his one sincere conviction, and, though he was at last calm enough to see that he must not allow this conviction to wreck his suit, he was not so calm as to maintain a clear judgment. It was plain that Marian would not be turned from her experiment. His best course was, he then reasoned, immediately to put on record his opinion of its futility, even to quarrel with her in defense of that opinion, and then, when experience brought the awakening upon which his own worldly experience counted, to stand ready to profit by the inevitable reaction that would most likely show the perfidy of the women whom Marian hoped to help, detract from the credibility of any gossip they might recount concerning him, and end by winning him his wife. "All right," he said sharply, "it is perfectly useless to talk reasonably to anybody that can take such a view of so simple a matter. Here is Thirty-fourth Street. I think we had better walk over to Broadway and get that taxi." The worst thing that a man can impute to a handsome woman is a lack of intellect. Marian's cheeks flushed. "I quite agree with you," she replied. "I am utterly incapable of arguing with anybody that so confuses law and justice." "Very well," said Dyker; "but I want you to remember what I have said upon the subject as a whole. When you have trusted these women and been betrayed by them, when they have poisoned your mind against all the principles you have been brought up to believe, when you have left the world of sentiment and bruised your poor hands with hammering at the door of fact, then you will acknowledge that I have been right. I am not angry----" "Oh, of course not!" "I am not angry, but I am firm. I only ask you to believe that I shall never be far away from the settlement, and that you have only to telephone for me when you have need of me."