e could
not escape his own evil temper. Even the flowering lanes where Goodhue
and he had run so frequently during their undergraduate days mocked his
limping steps, his heavy cane; seemed asking him what there was in
common between that eager youth and the man who had come back to share a
definite farewell with Betty; to stand, stripped of his veneer, against
a wall to avoid a more difficult parting from Sylvia. There was one
thing: the determination of the boy lived in the man, become greater,
more headstrong, more relentless.

He paused and, chin in hand, rested against a gate. What about Wandel,
who had admired the original George Morton? Would he approve of his
threats to Dalrymple, of his probable course with the Planters? If he
were consistent he would have to; yet people were so seldom consistent.
It was even likely that George's repetition of Dalrymple's shocking
insults would be frowned upon more blackly than the original,
unforgiveable wrong. George straightened and walked back toward the
house. It made no difference what people thought. He was George Morton.
Even at the cost of his own future he would keep Sylvia from joining her
life to Dalrymple's, and certainly Lambert could be made to understand
why that had to be.

The warm sun cheered him a little. Dalrymple was scared. He wouldn't
make George take any further steps. It was going to be all right. But
why didn't women see through Dalrymple, or rather why didn't he more
thoroughly give himself away to them? Because, George decided, guarded
women from their little windows failed to see the real world.

Dalrymple obsessed him even when, after luncheon, he sat with Lambert
upstairs, discussing business chiefly. He wanted to burst out with:

"Why don't you wake up? How can you approve of this intimacy between
your sister and a man like that?"

He didn't believe the other knew that intimacy had progressed; and when
Lambert spoke of Dalrymple, calling attention again to his apparent
reformation, George cleansed his mind a trifle, placing, as it were, the
foundation for a possible announcement of a more active enmity.

"Don't see why you admire anything he does, Lambert. It isn't
particularly pleasant for me to have you, for I've been watching him,
and I've quite made up my mind. You asked me when I first got home if I
wouldn't meet him halfway. I don't fancy he'd ever start in my
direction, but if he did I wouldn't meet him. Sorry. That's definite. I
mu