"Society is lost unless some great upheaval shall clear the rubbish and we build new foundations on truth and fellowship and freedom." Overman put his hand on Gordon's knee. "Frank, I'm a godless, crusty bachelor, but I read history. Destroy the integrity of the family and the salt of the earth is lost. The whole thing will rot." "But I propose to purify and glorify the home its life by building it on love." "Your dream's a fake and its world peopled with fools." "Love must conquer all," the dreamer insisted. "And to do it, Frank, it must begin at home. You are blinded by a woman's beauty." "No; I love her with the one master passion of manhood. Such love is itself the highest expression of life." "Confound you," snapped Overman, "love as many women as you please, but don't desert your wife and children. It's too vulgar. I'm ashamed of you." "I will not live a lie," Gordon said, with emphasis. "Strange madness. I urge you to tell a tiny little polite lie and save your wife and children. You're too good to lie, so you kill your wife, proclaim an insane crusade of lust, and call it a religion!" "We can't control the beat of our hearts," was the dreamy reply. "No, you can't; but you can control the stroke of your big, blue-veined fist! You have struck the mother of your children with your brute claws. It's a mean, low thing to do, call it by as many high names as you please. Love as many women as you like, but for decency's sake--can't you honour your wife with a polite lie?" "It's not in me to lie, or to love but one woman." The banker's massive shoulders went up and his bushy brows lifted. "You'll end with a dozen, and it's such a stupid old story. You think the performance an original drama in which you are playing a star role. It's as old as the brute beneath the skin of your big hairy hand. Alexander could conquer the world, but he died in drunken revelry with a worthless woman. Caesar and Mark Antony forgot the Roman Empire for the smile of Cleopatra. Frederick the Great became a puppet in the hands of a ballet dancer. She spoke and he obeyed. Conde, in the meridian of his splendid manhood, the pride and glory of France, sacrificed his family, his fortune and his friends for an adventuress, who murdered him. Charles Stewart Parnell, the uncrowned king of Ireland, forgot his people and stumbled into death and oblivion over the form of a woman. The hills and valleys of the centuries are white with the bones of these fools." "There was never a case just like mine." "So every fool thought." "But you have not seen this woman. You do not know her," Gordon protested, hotly. "No; and I don't want to know her. 'Goest thou to see a woman? Take thy whip!' Women, savages and children are inferior and immature forms of evolution. But they are going to prove more than a match for you, my boy."