It's a protection to her virtue." "Oh, pshaw! I don't believe it at all," cried young Haight, impatiently.

"I believe that a girl is born with a natural intuitive purity that will lead her to protect her virtue just as instinctively as she would dodge a blow; if she wants to go wrong she will have to make an effort herself to overcome that instinct." "And if she don't," cried Vandover eagerly, "if she don't--if she don't protect her virtue, I say a man has a right to go as far with her as he can." "If _he_ don't, some one else will," said Geary.
"Ah, you can't get around it that way," answered young Haight, smiling.
"It's a man's duty to protect a girl, even if he has to protect her against herself." When he got home that night Vandover thought over this remark of young Haight's and in its light reviewed what had occurred in the room at the Imperial.

He felt aroused, nervous, miserably anxious.

At length he tried to dismiss the subject from his mind; he woke up his drowsing grate fire, punching it with the poker, talking to it, saying, "Wake up there, you!" When he was undressed, he sat down before it in his bathrobe, absorbing its heat luxuriously, musing into the coals, scratching himself as was his custom.

But for all that he fretted nervously and did not sleep well that night.
Next morning he took his bath.