"Yes," he said, reddening nicely; "between you and Boots and myself I've decided that I'm going in for--for whatever any man is going in for--life! Ninette, life to the full and up to the hilt for mine!--not side-stepping anything. . . . Because I--because, Nina, it's shameful for a man to admit to himself that he cannot make good, no matter how thoroughly he's been hammered to the ropes. And so I'm starting out again--not hunting trouble like him of La Mancha--but, like him in this, that I shall not avoid it. . . . Is _that_ plain to you, little sister?" "Yes, oh, yes, it is!" she murmured; "I am so happy, so proud--but I knew it was in your blood, Phil; I knew that you were merely hurt and stunned--badly hurt, but not fatally!--you could not be; no weaklings come from our race." "But still our race has always been law-abiding--observant of civil and religious law. If I make myself free again, I take some laws into my own hands.". "How do you mean?" she asked. "Well," he said grimly, "for example, I am forbidden, in some States, to marry again--" "But you _know_ there was no reason for _that_!" "Yes, I do happen to know; but still I am taking the liberty of disregarding the law if I do. Then, what clergyman, of our faith, would marry me to anybody?" "That, too, you know is not just, Phil. You were innocent of wrong-doing; you were chivalrous enough to make no defence--" "Wrong-doing? Nina, I was such a fool that I was innocent of sense enough to do either good or evil. Yet I did do harm; there never was such a thing as a harmless fool. But all I can do is to go and sin no more; yet there is little merit in good conduct if one hides in a hole too small to admit temptation. No; there are laws civil and laws ecclesiastical; and sometimes I think a man is justified in repealing the form and retaining the substance of them, and remoulding it for purposes of self-government; as I do, now. . . . Once, oppressed by form and theory, I told you that to remarry after divorce was a slap at civilisation. . . . Which is true sometimes and sometimes not. Common sense, not laws, must govern a man in that matter. But if any motive except desire to be a decent citizen sways a self-punished man toward self-leniency, then is he unpardonable if he breaks those laws which truly were fashioned for such as he!" "Saint Simon! Saint Simon! Will you please arise, stretch your limbs, and descend from your pillar?" said Nina; "because I am going to say something that is very, very serious; and very near my heart." "I remember," he said; "it's about Eileen, isn't it?" "Yes, it is about Eileen." He waited; and again his sister's eyes began restlessly searching his for something that she seemed unable to find. "You make it a little difficult, Phil; I don't believe I had better speak of it." "Why not?" "Why, just because you ask me 'why not?' for example." "Is it anything that worries you about Eileen?"