"That may be. Mr. Lorimer has been good to a great many people, and we aren't going to forget it. That doesn't keep us from knowing his weakness."
"No," Arlt said simply; "but it might keep us from discussing it."
Thayer's lips shut closely for an instant. He felt a rebuke which Arlt would never have dared to intend.
"It might; but it does not. We both know it, and there is no harm in our talking it over. Lorimer is weak and foolish; he isn't nearly so bad as many men we know. The taint is in his blood, and he is too easy-going to fight it out."
"But he did fight, last summer," Arlt urged.
Thayer's thoughts flew backwards to one night, in Lorimer's room at the hotel. It seemed to him he could still see Lorimer's flushed face, still hear against the background of noises that marred the stillness of the August moonlight outside the window, the high-pitched, insistent voice of the man who sat on the edge of the bed, arguing about the necessity of unlacing his shoes before taking them off. The next morning, Beatrix had received a note from Thayer, apologizing for carrying Lorimer off for a day's fishing. Cotton Mather himself might well have envied the grim fervor of the sermon preached by his namesake, that sunshiny summer day. The old-time hell gave place to a more modern theory of retribution; but the terrors were painted with a black-tipped brush, and Lorimer had shuddered, as he listened. For the once, Thayer had made no effort to avoid rousing his antagonism. Lorimer had been more angry than ever before in his life; then the inevitable reaction had come, and it had been a penitent, hopeful sinner who had walked up the pier at Thayer's side, late in the afternoon. But Arlt, who had been playing Chopin at Monomoy, all the previous evening, was quite at a loss to understand how a single day's fishing could so completely exhaust a strong man like Thayer.
Arlt changed his phrase to the direct question.
"Don't you think he fought with the best that was in him?"
And Thayer assented with perfect truthfulness,—
"I do."