e.

"You had made me eternally your debtor had you shaken out the flame," he
said.

"My nerves are on a hair-trigger these days," Martin apologized. "Hope I
didn't hurt you. Here, let me mix a fresh toddy."

"Ah, you young Greek!" Brissenden went on. "I wonder if you take just
pride in that body of yours. You are devilish strong. You are a young
panther, a lion cub. Well, well, it is you who must pay for that
strength."

"What do you mean?" Martin asked curiously, passing aim a glass. "Here,
down this and be good."

"Because--" Brissenden sipped his toddy and smiled appreciation of it.
"Because of the women. They will worry you until you die, as they have
already worried you, or else I was born yesterday. Now there's no use in
your choking me; I'm going to have my say. This is undoubtedly your calf
love; but for Beauty's sake show better taste next time. What under
heaven do you want with a daughter of the bourgeoisie? Leave them alone.
Pick out some great, wanton flame of a woman, who laughs at life and
jeers at death and loves one while she may. There are such women, and
they will love you just as readily as any pusillanimous product of
bourgeois sheltered life."

"Pusillanimous?" Martin protested.

"Just so, pusillanimous; prattling out little moralities that have been
prattled into them, and afraid to live life. They will love you, Martin,
but they will love their little moralities more. What you want is the
magnificent abandon of life, the great free souls, the blazing
butterflies and not the little gray moths. Oh, you will grow tired of
them, too, of all the female things, if you are unlucky enough to live.
But you won't live. You won't go back to your ships and sea; therefore,
you'll hang around these pest-holes of cities until your bones are
rotten, and then you'll die."

"You can lecture me, but you can't make me talk back," Martin said.
"After all, you have but the wisdom of your temperament, and the wisdom
of my temperament is just as unimpeachable as yours."

They disagreed about love, and the magazines, and many things, but they
liked each other, and on Martin's part it was no less than a profound
liking. Day after day they were together, if for no more than the hour
Brissenden spent in Martin's stuffy room. Brissenden never arrived
without his quart of whiskey, and when they dined together down-town, he
drank Scotch and soda throughout the meal. He invariably paid the way
fo