"You mean that he would have no excuse for keeping out of danger," she laughed. "That when he saw a duty, or heard its call, he would not be able to justify himself in sitting calmly down to consider if the sacrifice were worth while! Then, indeed, would the world be a sorry place! Personally, I'd rather see fat dogs stalking over the earth than just bones!"
"I hope you are deliberately misconstruing what I have said," he flushed furiously. "Fear of physical and mental pains are just the same, requiring the same courage to go through." He stopped, as though weighing the wisdom of continuing. "Oh, I don't care," he moved uneasily, "I want to tell you nearer what I mean. Once, a long time ago—maybe three years or four—there was a girl for whom I'd have suffered anything and thanked God for the pain. That's loving some! And there was another chap, a sort of friend of mine, and a right decent sort; steady, always at work, and people said she'd make a great mistake by taking me. They saw him only when he was making money by his own grinding, you know, and saw me only when I was spending my allowance. He wanted her, too; and it was a pretty nice race between us, with a foregone conclusion that she'd take one or the other. She didn't pay any attention to what the people said, but one day I picked up some kind of a self-righteous, courageous microbe, and decided the proper way for her—I stepped aside."
"And?" she asked, when he did not continue.
"My courage was there, but my point of view was warped; I was out of focus on duty," he quietly asserted. "She married the other fellow, and it developed too late that his life was a shabby muss. Now her eyes are heavy with an endless sorrow. I think that was when I tried—well, when I began drinking some."
"Wouldn't you have done that anyway?" she asked.
"Perhaps," he slowly answered.
"If he had not married her, and she were here now, would you?"
"Not since you are here," he debonairly smiled.
She might not have heard this from the way she sat, looking down and thinking.
"I suppose," she said at last, "that all men's lives are shabby musses. You may think me unkind, but without a shadow of doubt you would have made her unhappy, too. You are that type."