It was sometime later when the man began to prepare for the evening to which he had looked forward with such eagerness and all his fierce and driving haste was gone. The mad tumult of his manhood strength was stilled. He moved, now, with a purpose, sullen, grim, defiant. The fight was on. While he was still vividly conscious of the woman whose compelling power he felt, he felt, now, as well, the pure touch of those baby lips. While he still saw the light in the woman's eyes and sensed the meaning of her smile, he saw and sensed as clearly the loving innocence that had shown in the little girl's face as it was lifted up to his. Upon his manhood's strength lay the woman's luring spell. Upon his manhood the baby's kiss lay as a seal of sacredness--upon his lips it burned as a coal of holy fire. The fight was on. The man's life was not at all an easy life. Beside his work and his memories there was little to hold him true. Since that day when he stood face to face with Life and, for the first time, knew that he was a man, he had been, save for a few friends among the men of his own class, alone. The exacting demands of his work had left him little time or means to spend in seeking social pleasures or in the delights of fellowship with those for whose fellowship he would have cared, even had the way to their society been, at that period of his life, open to him. He told himself, always, that sometime in the future, when he had worked out still farther his dreams, he would find the way to the social life that he would enjoy but until then, he must, of necessity, live much alone. And now--now--the testing time--the crisis in his life--had come. Even as it must come to every man who knows his manhood so it had come to him. The man was not deceived. He knew the price he would pay in defeat. But, even while he knew this--even while he knew what defeat would mean to him, so great was her power that he went on making ready to go to her. With the kiss of the little girl upon his lips he made ready to go to the woman. It was as though he had drifted too far and the current had become too strong for him to turn back. Thus do such men yield to such temptations. Thus are men betrayed by the very strength of their manhood.