"No two human cases ever are, but the theme is the same. You might arrange a different compromise; it would be a compromise."
"Your difficulties were enormous! Why need I plan for such misfortunes?"
"You mean the outside affairs, the money? That might be arranged of course. There would remain my daughter, a subject which I can discuss with precision. She is in fair health, and while I live to look after her she will probably continue so. Her nerves are morbid, her egotism is excessive, her restlessness is abnormal. She is rather a brilliant girl, I think, and to me a very dear one. But her career needs to be guided, or some decided smash will come."
"You have no confidence in me?"
"The greatest. It is not her welfare only which I am considering, but yours. Besides, if she were normal or dull, not an exacting young American, yet she would be a woman. And as such her interests must be opposed to yours forever. Should you marry her, I would be forced to agree with her and oppose you wherever you stepped beyond conventionality."
Suddenly Long turned on his tormentor with a bold question.
"Your marriage you would not consider a failure, even under worse conditions?"
The doctor winced at this thrust, which he considered legitimate.
He had had his moments of doubt even in the thick of his loyalty to his wife and child when this question had tormented him. Miasmatic moments that come to firm men also, and make them dizzy with the thought of the mere waywardness of life. Had he been any better or wiser than Roper Ellwell? When the test of a vital passion had come he had acted like any other inconsiderate, purposeless young man, like any one with a chaotic will-less past!
But this temptation he had mastered, as he had mastered almost all the elements of his fate.