“Because I can’t. I can’t get myself away from the crowd I’ve picked up, and that’s the life they lead. Funny, too, I don’t really like one of ’em, yet I can’t keep away from ’em because I’m in the same ruts and talk the same lingo and drink the same drinks. That’s the real trouble, I suppose, and there’s a certain future ahead of me—a pleasant one to look forward to!” “What is?” “Drunken stockbroker,” George replied with laconic despondency. “That’s me, if I live to forty.” “I’d rather be one than buried in a mudhole on the prairie,” said Lena. “I’d rather be anything than that; yet it’s precisely what my thoughtful fiancé informs me I have no choice about. I think perhaps he’ll _learn_ whether I have or not, though!” “Better think it over,” George advised, with a thoughtful glance at his sister’s flushed and petulant face. “It might be the best thing for you.” “What!” “It might,” he insisted. “You’ve made a pretty quick-stepping New York of your own, Lena. Tea at Sherry’s means mighty little tea for you, my dear. A man told me the other day he’d never met a human being who could survive as many Benedictines in the afternoon as you can. Besides that, you get too much music.” “You’re crazy!” Lena cried. “I _live_ on music!” “No, you don’t,” he said. “You keep yourself woozy with it. You go on music debauches, Lena. You don’t take it as an art; you take it as an excitement. You keep your emotions frothing with it, and that’s why you can’t get along without it. If you hadn’t been in the habit of getting yourself woozy with music, that Venable affair would never have happened.” “George!” she said sharply, and her eyes, already angry, grew more brilliant with increased emotion. “Shame on you!” “Oh, well——” he said placatively. “It’s a thing you have no right to make me remember.” “Other people remember it,” he said, with a brother’s grimness. “You needn’t think because nobody outside the family ever speaks of it to you it isn’t thought of and referred to when you’re spoken _of_.” She looked pathetic at this, and reproached him in a broken voice. “Unmanly! One would think my own—my own brother——” “Your own brother is about the only person that _could_ speak of it to you in a friendly way, Lena. You know how the rest of the family speak of it to you—when they do.” “It’s so unfair!” she moaned. “Nobody ever understood——” “We needn’t to go into that,” George said gently. “I think myself it was your musical emotions on top of a constitutional lack of discretion. Oh, I don’t blame you! I’ve spent too much time trying to cover my own indiscretions from the family. I’m really more the family black sheep than you are, only you had worse luck; that’s all. I only mention it to get you to think a little before you talk of throwing Dan Oliphant over rather than to go and live in the town he’s so proud of.”