was not a cad. And since
purity is merely a relative term, he was not pure. That there was no
pitch under his nails was not because he had manicured diligently, but
because it had not been his luck to run across any pitch. He was not
good because he chose to be, because evil was repellant; but because he
had not had opportunity to become evil. But from this, on the other
hand, it is not to be argued that he would have gone bad had he had a
chance.

He was a product of the sheltered life. All his days had been lived in
a sanitary dwelling; the plumbing was excellent. The air he had
breathed had been mostly ozone artificially manufactured. He had been
sun-bathed in balmy weather, and brought in out of the wet when it
rained. And when he reached the age of choice he had been too fully
occupied to deviate from the straight path, along which his mother had
taught him to creep and toddle, and along which he now proceeded to
walk upright, without thought of what lay on either side.

Vitality cannot be used over again. If it be expended on one thing,
there is none left for the other thing. And so with Vance Corliss.
Scholarly lucubrations and healthy exercises during his college days
had consumed all the energy his normal digestion extracted from a
wholesome omnivorous diet. When he did discover a bit of surplus
energy, he worked it off in the society of his mother and of the
conventional minds and prim teas she surrounded herself with. Result:
A very nice young man, of whom no maid's mother need ever be in
trepidation; a very strong young man, whose substance had not been
wasted in riotous living; a very learned young man, with a Freiberg
mining engineer's diploma and a B.A. sheepskin from Yale; and, lastly,
a very self-centred, self-possessed young man.

Now his greatest virtue lay in this: he had not become hardened in the
mould baked by his several forbears and into which he had been pressed
by his mother's hands. Some atavism had been at work in the making of
him, and he had reverted to that ancestor who sturdily uplifted. But
so far this portion of his heritage had lain dormant. He had simply
remained adjusted to a stable environment. There had been no call upon
the adaptability which was his. But whensoever the call came, being so
constituted, it was manifest that he should adapt, should adjust
himself to the unwonted pressure of new conditions. The maxim of the
rolling stone may be all true; but not