I suppose I _could_ be one of them, you know--one of those fellows that get into trouble--if I saw it was needed; but it isn't.

Let the men who can't help it do it--they have no choice.

Hereafter I shall worry as little about the world's salvation as I do about my own." When they had finished dinner he let it be known that he was not a little anxious concerning a message that was late in arriving, and he made it a point, indeed, that the maid should advise Mrs.Linford to this effect, with an inquiry whether she might not have seen the delayed missive.
Then, after a word with Allan, he went to his room and from his south window smoked into the night--smoked into something approaching quietude a mind that had been rebelliously running back to the bare-armed girl in dusky white--the wondering, waiting girl whose hand had trembled into his so long ago--so many years during which he had been a dreaming fool, forgetting the world to worship certain impalpable gods of idealism--forgetting a world in which it was the divinely sensible custom to eat one's candy cane instead of preserving it superstitiously through barren years! He knew that he had awakened too late for more than a fleeting vision of what would have made his life full.

Now he must be off, up the path again, this time knowing certainly that the woman would never more stand waiting and wondering at the end, to embitter his renunciations.

The woman was definitely gone.