him that Kitty was dining at a cafe on the way
home. Cutty was thorough. He telephoned the restaurant and was advised
that Miss Conover had reserved a table. He had forgotten to send down
the operative who guarded Kitty at that end. But the distance from the
office to the Subway was so insignificant!

"You are looking fit," he said across the table.

"Ought to be off your hands by Monday. But what about Stefani Gregor? I
can't stir, leaving him hanging on a peg."

"I am going into the study shortly to decide that. Head bother you?"

"Occasionally."

"Ryan easy to get along with?"

"Rather a good sort. I say, you know, you've seen a good deal of
life. Which do you consider the stronger, the inherited traits or
environment?"

"Environment. That is the true mould. There is good and bad in all of
us. It is brought into prominence by the way we live. An angel cannot
touch pitch without becoming defiled. On the other hand, the worst
gutter rats in the world saved France. Do you suppose that thought will
not always be tugging at and uplifting those who returned from the first
Marne?"

"There is hope, then, for me!"

"Hope?"

"Yes. You know that my father, my uncle, and my grandfather were fine
scoundrels."

"Under their influence you would have been one, too. But no man could
live with Stefani Gregor and not absorb his qualities. Your environment
has been Anglo-Saxon, where the first block in the picture is fair
play. You have been constantly under the tutelage of a fine and lofty
personality, Gregor's. Whatever evil traits you may have inherited, they
have become subject to the influences that have surrounded you. Take
me, for instance. I was born in a rather puritanical atmosphere. My
environments have always been good. Yet there lurks in me the taint of
Macaire. Given the wrong environment, I should now have my picture in
the Rogues' Gallery."

"You?"

"Yes."

Hawksley played with his fork. "If you had a daughter would you trust me
with her?"

"Yes. Any man who can weep unashamed over the portrait of his mother may
be trusted. Once you are out there in Montana you'll forget all about
your paternal forbears."

Handsome beggar, thought Cutty; but evidently born under the opal. An
inexplicable resentment against his guest stirred his heart. He resented
his youth, his ease of manner, his fluency in the common tongue. He was
theoretically a Britisher; he thought British; approached subjects from
a Britis