"Certainly," Holt cheerfully admitted, "I'm past salvation; everybody knows that; but you——"
"I have never been a waster."
"That's just it. It'd be better for you if you had."
"You don't mean that."
"In this mix-up, yes I do. Not much, you know. Just a little picnic now and then."
"Modern medicine has knocked that theory into a cocked hat."
"Has it, Jim? All right. But a man that's been a long time in a close room can stand the close room a bit longer than a fellow that's just come in from the open air. You've formed habits. Fine habits, I grant you that, but you've formed 'em; they're fixed, just as fixed as my bad ones are. You've come to depend on 'em, even if you don't know it. Your brain is used to 'em. So's your body—only more so. Well, what's going to happen when you change 'em all of a sudden—habits of a lifetime, mind you? That's what I want to know: what's going to happen?"
"You talk," said Stainton, "as if every man that married, married under the age of forty-five."
"I talk," Holt retorted, "as if no man of fifty married for his own good a girl of eighteen."
Stainton's fist clenched. His face flushed crimson. His steel-grey eyes narrowed. He raised a tight hand. Then, with the fist in mid-air, his mood changed. He mastered himself. The fist opened. The hand descended gently. Stainton chuckled.