f his character; but all mothers are anxious, and none of
them can build with no foundation and no soul timber. She had material
for a man to her hand, or she couldn't have made one."

"I see what you mean."

"So far as any inexperienced girl ever sees," said the doctor. "Some day
if you live to fifty you will know, but you can't comprehend it now."

"If you think I lived all my life in Chicago's poverty spots and don't
know unbridled human nature!"

"I found you and your mother unusually innocent women. You may
understand some things. I hope you do. It will help you to decide who is
the real man among the men who come into your life. There are some men,
Ruth, who are fit to mate with a woman, and to perpetuate themselves and
their mental and moral forces in children, who will be like them, and
there are others who are not. It is these 'others' who are responsible
for the sin of the world, the sickness and suffering. Any time you are
sure you have a chance at a moral man, square and honest, in control of
his brain and body, if you are a wise woman, Ruth, stick to him as the
limpet to the rock."

"You mean stick to the Harvester?"

"If you are a wise woman!"

"When was a woman ever wise?"

"A few have been. They are the only care-free, really happy ones of the
world, the only wives without a big, poison, blue-bottle fly in their
ointment."

"I detest flies!" said the Girl.

"So do I," said the doctor. "For this reason I say to you choose the
ointment that never had one in it. Take the man who is 'master of his
fate, captain of his soul.' Stick to the Harvester! He is infinitely the
better man!"

"Well have you seen anything to indicate that I wasn't sticking?" asked
the Girl.

"No. And for your sake I hope I never will."

She laughed softly.

"You do love him, Ruth?"

"As I did my mother, yes. There is not a trace in my heart of the thing
he calls love."

"You have been stunted, warped, and the fountains of life never have
opened. It will come with right conditions of living."

"Do you think so?"

"I know so. At least there is no one else you love, Ruth?"

"No one except you."

"And do you feel about me just as you do him?"

"No! It is different. What I owe him is for myself. What I owe you is
for my mother. You saw! You know! You understand what you did for her,
and what it meant to me. The Harvester must be the finest man on earth,
but when I try to think of either God or Heaven, your face