I mean, between Honor and Jimsy?"
He was visibly expecting a negative answer. "I know that Mrs. Lorimer
doesn't."

"Well, I disagree with her. I should say, with average youngsters of
their age that it was as transient as--as the measles. But they aren't
average, Carter."

"I know that. At least, Honor isn't."

"Nor Jimsy. I sometimes think, Carter, that fellows of our type, yours
and mine," he was not looking at him now, he was running his long
fingers lazily through the hot and shining sand, "are apt to be a little
contemptuous in our minds of his sort. Being rather long on brain, we
fancy, we allow ourselves a scorn of the more or less unadorned brawn.
And yet,--they're the salt of the earth, Carter; they're the cities set
on hills. They do the world's red-blooded vital jobs while we--think.
And Honor's not clever either; you know that, Carter. All the sense and
balance and character in the world, Top Step, God love her, but not a
flash of brilliancy. They're capitally suited. Sane, sound, sweet;
gloriously fit and healthy young animals--" this was calculated cruelty;
Carter might as well face things; there would be a girl, waiting now
somewhere, no doubt, who wouldn't mind his limp, but Honor must have a
mate of her own vigorous breed,--Honor who had always and would always
"run with the boys,"--"who will produce their own sort again."

The boy's mouth was twisted. "And--and how about his blood--his
heredity? Isn't he one of the 'Wild Kings'?"

"You know," Stephen lighted a cigarette, "I don't believe he is! He's
got their looks and their charm, but I'm convinced he's two-thirds
Scotch mother,--that sturdy soul who would have saved his father if
death hadn't tricked her. And I'm rather a radical about heredity,
anyway, Carter. It's gruesomely overrated, I think. What is it?--Clammy
hands reaching out from the grave to clutch at warm young flesh--and
pollute it? Not while there are living hands to beat them off!" He began
to get vehement and warm. There was to be a chapter on heredity in that
book of his, one day. "It's a bogy. It goes down before environment as
the dark before the dawn. Why, environment's a vital, flesh and blood
thing, fighting with and for us every instant! I could take the
offspring of Philip the Second and Great Catherine and make a--a Frances
Willard or a Jane Addams of her,--_if_ people didn't sit about like
crows, cawing about her parents and her blood and her heritage. Even
dry, statis