"It's little enough, after all you've done for him! He told me."
"Just like him. But let's not get sidetracked. What I wanted to make clear is that I'm not so everlastingly strong as you seem to think."
"Tom, you'll not give way! You'll fight!"
"Yes, I'll fight," he responded soberly.
"And you'll win!"
"I hope so, girlie. I've fought it before, and it has downed me, time and again. But now it's different—unless you've found you were mistaken. But if you still feel as when you—as you did there on the cliff that morning—Good God! how could I lose out, with you backing me up?"
She looked at him with a quick recurrence of doubt. "You ask help of me?"
"If you care enough, Jenny. It's not going to be a joke. I've tried before, and gone under so many times that some people would say I've no show left. But let me tell you, girlie, I'm going to fight this time for all I'm worth. I'm going to break this curse if I can. It is a curse, you'll remember. I told you about my mother."
"You should not think of that. What does heredity count as against environment!"
"Environment?—heredity? By all accounts, my father was the man you've thought me, and a lot more—railroad engineer; nerviest man ever ran an engine out of Chicago on the Pennsylvania Line; American stock from way back—Scotch-Irish; sober as a church, steady, strong as a bull. Never an accident all the years he pulled the fast express till the one that smashed him. Could have jumped and saved himself—stayed by his throttle, and saved the train. They brought him home—what was left of him. Papers headlined him; you know how they do it. That was my father."