"A girl is mature at eighteen--mature enough. I won't talk of that, George. We are discussing my age, and I tell you that I have something better than even the specialist's word to stand on: I have the knowledge of my own careful, healthy, abstemious life. I am sounder in body than hundreds and hundreds of what you would call average New Yorkers of twenty-one. I am sounder than their average. More than that, I have done something that most of them have not done: I have kept fresh and unimpaired the tastes, the appet.i.tes, the spirit of that age."

"You mean you believe you have."

"I know it."

"How can you know it until you try? And you won't try till you've committed yourself, Jim."

Stainton shook his great head.

"At this moment," he said, "I'm in twice better health--mental, moral, physical and every other way--understand me: _every other way_--than you were ten years ago."

"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 c.o.c.ked 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.

"You don't know what you're talking about," he said. "I forgive you because I know you are speaking only out of your friendship for me." He hesitated. "That is, unless----" He frowned again, but only slightly--"unless you yourself," he interrogatively concluded, "happen to feel toward Miss Stannard as I do?"

Holt relieved him there. It was his turn to laugh, and he laughed heartily.

"O, Lord, no!" said he. "Make yourself easy about that, old man. I've got just enough to live on comfortably by myself without exercising too much economy, and if I ever marry it will have to be a woman that can give me the luxuries I can't get otherwise."

"Then," smiled Stainton, "I hope you will soon need many luxuries and will soon find a good woman to supply them. I thank you for your interest, George," he went on; "but you have been arguing about me, and, in spite of our ages, you are old and I am young. I am young, I tell you, and even if I were not, I could see nothing wrong in a marriage between a man of my years and a girl of Miss Stannard's."

"Between fifty and eighteen?"

"Between fifty and eighteen. Exactly. It happens every day."

"It does. But do you think because it's plenty, it's right? Do you think that whatever happens often, happens for the best?"

"I do not think; I know. I know that a girl of eighteen is better off with a man steady enough to protect and guide her than she is with an irresponsible boy of her own years."

"How about the irresponsible girl? Why should the boy be more irresponsible than the girl?"

"The girl will have a mature man to protect and guide her."

"A man of twenty-five? Or a man of fifty? Protect and guide!" echoed Holt. "Is _that_ marriage?"

"An important part of it."

"Pff!" George sniffed. "You must think that guiding and protecting is an easy business."

"I think," said Stainton, good-humouredly, "that you are a good deal of a fool."

"So you've got it all arranged in your own mind?" Holt, who had ordered his sixth whiskey-and-soda, poured it down his throat. The fifth was already thickening his speech.

"All," said Stainton.

"I see. You've counted on everything but G.o.d. Don't you think you'd better reckon a little on G.o.d, Jim?"

Stainton bore with him. After all, Holt had now reached that stage of drunkenness at which most drinkers invite the Deity to a part in their libations.

"What I do," Stainton said, "I do without blaming G.o.d for my success or failure. I am not one of those persons who, when anything unusually unpleasant comes to them, refer to it as 'G.o.d's will.'"

Holt hiccoughed. Religion had never bothered him and so he, in his sober moments, religiously refrained from bothering religion. His cups, however, were sometimes theological.

"Still, He's there, you know," said Holt.

"Your G.o.d?" asked Stainton. "Why, your G.o.d is only your own prejudices made infinite."

"You know what I mean," Holt laboriously explained. "In the really 'portant things of life, what's fellow do, and what makes him do it?"

"Reason," suggested Stainton.

"The really 'portant things generally come too quick for--for--lemme see: for reason."

"Philosophy?"

"To quick for that, too."

"Instinct, perhaps."

"'Nd don't say 'nstinct. Fellow's 'nstincts are low, but he does something--high. Sort of surroundings 's been brought up in--partly. Not altogether. Partly's something else; something from--from----" Holt groped for the word. "From outside," he concluded triumphantly and waved an explanatory hand. "Well," he added, "that's G.o.d."

Stainton rose.

"Yes, yes," he replied. "I dare say. But it's getting late, and I'm an early riser." He beckoned to a waiter for his bill.

"What's hurry?" enquired Holt.

"It is late," repeated Stainton.

Holt shook his head.