“I'm going to send Mary and the children off to the mountains. She needs it, and so do they. And when you're in shape, I'll send you right on to join them. Then you can take your summer vacation before you come back to the office.” “I'm not going to stay in this damned hole, for all you talk about it,” Al announced abruptly. “Yes you are, and you're going to get your health and strength back again, so that the look of you will put the colour in Mary's cheeks where it used to be.” “I'm going back with you.” Al's voice was firm. “I'm going to take the same train back. It's about time for that carriage, I guess.” “I haven't told you all my plans,” George tried to go on, but Al cut him off. “You might as well quit that. I don't want any of your soapy talking. You treat me like a child. I'm not a child. My mind's made up, and I'll show you how long it can stay made up. You needn't talk to me. I don't care a rap for what you're going to say.” A baleful light was in his eyes, and to his brother he seemed for all the world like a cornered rat, desperate and ready to fight. As George looked at him he remembered back to their childhood, and it came to him that at last was aroused in Al the same old stubborn strain that had enabled him, as a child, to stand against all force and persuasion. George abandoned hope. He had lost. This creature was not human. The last fine instinct of the human had fled. It was a brute, sluggish and stolid, impossible to move--just the raw stuff of life, combative, rebellious, and indomitable. And as he contemplated his brother he felt in himself the rising up of a similar brute. He became suddenly aware that his fingers were tensing and crooking like a thug's, and he knew the desire to kill. And his reason, turned traitor at last, counselled that he should kill, that it was the only thing left for him to do. He was aroused by a servant calling to him through the trees that the carriage was waiting. He answered. Then, looking straight before him, he discovered his brother. He had forgotten it was his brother. It had been only a thing the moment before. He began to talk, and as he talked the way became clear to him. His reason had not turned traitor. The brute in him had merely orientated his reason. “You are no earthly good, Al,” he said. “You know that. You've made Mary's life a hell. You are a curse to your children. And you have not made life exactly a paradise for the rest of us.” “There's no use your talking,” Al interjected. “I'm not going to stay here.” “That's what I'm coming to,” George continued. “You don't have to stay here.” (Al's face brightened, and he involuntarily made a movement, as though about to start toward the carriage.) “On the other hand, it is not necessary that you should return with me. There is another way.”