to be able to say, an' there's few that can say
it, but I tell you it's been a hell of a fight!..."

He lay back in the chair and puffed smoke above his head for a while. "A
hell of a fight," he murmured, and then did not speak for a while.

"Yes?" said John Marsh.

"I've been down the lanes of a summer night, an' seen young girls from
the farms about, with fine long hair hangin' down their backs, an' them
smilin' an' lovely ... an' begod, I've had to hurry past them, hurry
hard, damn near run!... Mind you, they were good girls, John Marsh! I
don't want you to think they were out lookin' for men. They weren't. But
they were young, an' they were just learnin' things, an' I daresay I
could have had them if I'd tried ... an' I don't think there's any real
harm in men an' women goin' together ... but we've settled, all of us,
that, real or no real, there is _some_ sort of harm in it, an' we've
agreed to condemn that sort of thing, an' so I submit to the law. Do you
follow me?"

"No, not quite. Those sort of things don't arise for me. I'm a Catholic
and I obey the Church's laws!..."

"I know you do. But I'm a man, not a Catholic!... Now, don't lose your
temper. I couldn't help lettin' that slip out.... What I mean is this.
There's a lot of waywardness in all of us, that's pleasant enough if
it's checked when it gets near the limit of things, but there has to be
a check!"

"Yes?" Marsh said. "And in my case the check is the Church, the
expression on earth of God's will!..."

"Well, in my case it isn't. In my case it's my sense of responsibility
as a gentleman. We've got ourselves into crowds that must be controlled
somehow, and there isn't much room for wayward people in a crowd. That's
why geniuses get such a rotten time. Now, my notion of a gentleman is a
man who controls the crowd by controllin' himself. D'you follow me? He
knows that the crowd'll bust up an' become a dirty riot if it's let out
of control, an' he knows that he can influence it best an' keep the whip
hand of it, if it knows that he isn't doin' anything that he tells it
not to do. D'you see?"

"Yes," Marsh said. "That's the Catholic religion!..."

"I know as well as I'm livin'," Mr. Quinn went on, "that I have enough
power over myself to know when to stop an' when to go on. That's been
bred in me. That's why I'm a gentleman. But I know that if I let myself
do things that I can control, I'll be givin' an example to hundreds of
other people who aren