The grassy bank on which they lay had the rich, burned smell of the hot
days. A wind rustled the standing corn that formed a kind of wall behind
them. The moon was in the sky and shone down across bank after bank of
serried clouds. The grandiloquence went out of the voice of Telfer and his
face became serious.
"My foolishness is more than half earnest," he said. "I think that a man
or boy who has set for himself a task had better let women and girls
alone. If he be a man of genius, he has a purpose independent of all the
world, and should cut and slash and pound his way toward his mark,
forgetting every one, particularly the woman that would come to grips with
him. She also has a mark toward which she goes. She is at war with him and
has a purpose that is not his purpose. She believes that the pursuit of
women is an end for a life. For all they now condemn Mike McCarthy who
went to the asylum because of them and who, while loving life, came near
to taking life, the women of Caxton do not condemn his madness for
themselves; they do not blame him for loitering away his good years or for
making an abortive mess of his good brain. While he made an art of the
pursuit of women they applauded secretly.
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