"I'm glad you think so."
"I do think so. Blair is young yet; and if she costs him something, he may value her—and I think I can manage to make her cost him something! A man doesn't value what comes cheap; and all his life everything has come cheap to Blair."
"I don't see what you're driving at."
"Just this," she explained; "Blair has had everything he wanted,—oh, yes, yes; it's my fault!" she struck an impatient fist upon the arm of her chair. "I told you it was my fault. Don't take precious time to argue over that. It is all my fault. There! will that satisfy you? I've given him everything. So he thought he could have everything. He doesn't know the meaning of 'no.' He has got to learn. I shall teach him. I have thought it all out. I'm going to make a man of him."
"How?" said Robert Ferguson.
"I haven't got the details clear in my mind yet, but this is the gist of it: NO money but what he earns."
"No money?"
"After this, it will be 'root, hog, or die.'"
"But Blair can't root," her superintendent said, fair in spite of himself. And at that her face lighted with a sort of awful purpose.
"Then he must die! Ferguson, don't you see—he has begun to die already?" Again her face quivered. "Look at this business of taking David's wife—oh, I know, they weren't married yet, but the principle is the same; what do you call that but dying? Look at his whole life: what has he done? Received—received! Given nothing. Ferguson, you can't fool God: you've got to give something! A privilege means an obligation—the obligation of sweat! Sweat of your body or your brains. Blair has never sweated. He's always had something for nothing. That is the one immorality that damns. It has damned Blair. Of course, I ought to have realized it before, but I—I suppose I was too busy. Yes; I tell you, if Blair had had to work for what he's got, as you and I have worked for what we've got, he wouldn't be where he is to-day. You know that! He'd have had something else to think of than satisfying his eyes, or his stomach, or his lust. He'd have been decent."