experience and knowledge of the world, when he was stronger, in a word,
he would curb the thing and restrain it. He saw no danger in such a
course. It was what other men did with impunity.

In company with Geary and young Haight he had come to frequent a certain
one of the fast cafés of the city. Here he met and became acquainted
with a girl called Flossie. It was the opportunity for which he was
waiting, and he seized it at once.

This time there was no recoil of conscience, no shame, no remorse; he
even felt a better estimation of himself, that self-respect that comes
with wider experiences and with larger views of life. He told himself
that all men should at one time see certain phases of the world; it
rounded out one's life. After all, one had to be a man of the world.
Those men only were perverted who allowed themselves to be corrupted by
such vice.

Thus it was that Vandover, by degrees, drifted into the life of a
certain class of the young men of the city. Vice had no hold on him. The
brute had grown larger in him, but he knew that he had the creature in
hand. He was its master, and only on rare occasions did he permit
himself to gratify its demands, feeding its abominable hunger from that
part of him which he knew to be the purest, the cleanest, and the best.

Three years passed in this fashion.




Chapter Three