Why, you young fool, you seem to have no conception, none in the world,
of what you propose to do. In a week, in your frame of mind, you'd have
a hundred fights; there would be time for nothing else but knocking out
the men who insulted you. You'll collapse over Sunday if you are not
absolutely and totally impervious to everything and everybody. The only
way you can throw the world over is to ignore it; while you appear to
have the idea that it should put a rose in your buttonhole."
"You don't have to tell me it's going to be stiff," Peyton Morris
asserted gloomily. "I can take care of that. Claire and Ira are the
hard part. Lee, if anyone a year ago had said that I was like this,
that I was even capable of it, I'd have ruined him. God, what a thing
to happen! I want you to understand that we, Mina and I, didn't have a
particle to do with it--it just flatly occurred. I had seen her only
three times when it was too late; and if you think I didn't try to
break it, and myself, too--"
Lee nodded. "Certainly. Why not, since it's bound to knock you on the
head? You've been very unfortunate: I can't imagine a man to whom this
would come worse."
"If I can make Mina happy I don't care about myself."
"Of course, that is understood," Lee Randon returned impatiently; "it
is nothing but sentimental rot, all the same. If you are not contented,
easy in mind, how can she be happy? You have got to believe entirely in
what you are doing, it must be right to you on every possible side; and
you can't make that grade, Peyton; you are too conventional
underneath.
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