e scatheless from all his tests both material
and spiritual. But Jerry's personality, his thoughts, his
sensibilities bulked too large. There was no room for a perspective.
To all intents and purposes I myself was Jerry, thinking his thoughts,
tasting his enthusiasms and his regrets. But I think if he had married
a street wench or engaged in a conspiracy to blow up the Capitol at
Washington I could scarcely have been more perturbed for him than I
was at finding how strong was the influence that this girl Marcia
exercised upon his actions. His fondness for her was the only flaw I
had ever discovered in Jerry's nature. He could speak of her
spirituality as he pleased, but there was another attraction here. I
had felt the allure of her personality, a magnetism less mental than
physical. Physical, of course, and because incomprehensible to Jerry
the more marvelous. I had looked upon the boy as a perfect human
animal, forgetting that he was only an animal after all. Marcia, the
woman without a heart, whose game was the hearts of others! Bah! No
woman without a heart could hold Jerry. If passion danced to him in
the mask of a purer thing, Jerry's honesty would strip off the
disguise in time. The danger was not now, but then, and even then
perhaps more hers than his.

I waited long for Jack Ballard, but he did not return and so I went
out into the streets and walked rapidly for exercise down town in the
general direction of Flynn's Gymnasium over on the East Side, where I
proposed to meet Jerry later in the afternoon. I had kept no record of
the time and when my appetite advised me that it was the luncheon
hour, I looked at my watch. It was two o'clock. I sauntered into a
cross street, finding at last a quiet place where I could eat and
think in peace. "Dry-as-dust!" I was. Twelve years ago I had railed at
the modern woman and learned my lesson from her. But now--! The years
had swept madly past my sanctuary, license running riot. Sin stalked
openly. The eyes of the women one met upon the streets were hard with
knowledge. Nothing was sacred--nothing hidden from young or old. And
men and women of wealth and tradition--I will not call them society,
which is far too big a word for so small a thing--men and women born
to lead and mold public thought and conduct, showed the way to a
voluptuousness which rivaled tottering Rome.

And this was the world into which my sinless man had been liberated!

I smiled to myself a little bitt