And yet he knew, furthermore, that hers was a certain stiff-kneed pride that would not have permitted her to accept marriage as an act of philanthropy.

There had really been no saving her, after all.

The love-disease had fastened upon her, and she had been doomed from the first to perish of it.
Her one possible chance had been that he, too, should have caught it.
And he had failed to catch it.

Most likely, if he had, it would have been from Freda or some other woman.

There was Dartworthy, the college man who had staked the rich fraction on Bonanza above Discovery.
Everybody knew that old Doolittle's daughter, Bertha, was madly in love with him.