ven
Molly Hatpin's wastrel waif shall never learn what her mother knows if
Destiny will help Madame Molly ever so little. And I think that Destiny
is often very kind--even to the Hatpin offspring."

Nina sat silent on the padded arm of her chair, looking up at her
brother.

"Mad preacher! Mad Mullah!--dear, dear fellow!" she said tenderly; "all
ills of the world canst thou discount, but not thine own."

"Those, too," he insisted, laughing; "I had a talk with Boots--but,
anyway, I'd already arrived at my own conclusion that--that--I'm rather
overdoing this blighted business--"

"Phil!"--in quick delight.

"Yes," he said, reddening nicely; "between you and Boots and myself I've
decided that I'm going in for--for whatever any man is going in
for--life! Ninette, life to the full and up to the hilt for mine!--not
side-stepping anything. . . . Because I--because, Nina, it's shameful
for a man to admit to himself that he cannot make good, no matter how
thoroughly he's been hammered to the ropes. And so I'm starting out
again--not hunting trouble like him of La Mancha--but, like him in this,
that I shall not avoid it. . . . Is _that_ plain to you, little sister?"

"Yes, oh, yes, it is!" she murmured; "I am so happy, so proud--but I
knew it was in your blood, Phil; I knew that you were merely hurt and
stunned--badly hurt, but not fatally!--you could not be; no weaklings
come from our race."

"But still our race has always been law-abiding--observant of civil and
religious law. If I make myself free again, I take some laws into my own
hands.".

"How do you mean?" she asked.

"Well," he said grimly, "for example, I am forbidden, in some States, to
marry again--"

"But you _know_ there was no reason for _that_!"

"Yes, I do happen to know; but still I am taking the liberty of
disregarding the law if I do. Then, what clergyman, of our faith, would
marry me to anybody?"

"That, too, you know is not just, Phil. You were innocent of
wrong-doing; you were chivalrous enough to make no defence--"

"Wrong-doing? Nina, I was such a fool that I was innocent of sense
enough to do either good or evil. Yet I did do harm; there never was
such a thing as a harmless fool. But all I can do is to go and sin no
more; yet there is little merit in good conduct if one hides in a hole
too small to admit temptation. No; there are laws civil and laws
ecclesiastical; and sometimes I think a man is justified in repealing
the form and retain