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The Lost Road by Richard Harding Davis
page 52 of 294 (17%)
cabman could possibly be? When you are like that you have no
respect for me, or for yourself. Part of my pride in you is that
you are so strong, that you control yourself, that common
pleasures never get a hold on you. If you couldn't control your
temper I wouldn't blame you, because you've a villainous temper
and you were born with it. But you weren't born with a taste for
liquor. None of your people drank. You never drank until you went
into the army. If I were a man," declared the girl, "I'd be ashamed
to admit anything was stronger than I was. You never let pain beat
you. I've seen you play polo with a broken arm, but in this you give
pain to others, you shame and humiliate the one you pretend to love,
just because you are weak, just because you can't say 'no.'"

Aintree laughed angrily.

"Drink has no hold on me," he protested. "It affects me as much as the
lights and the music affect a girl at her first dance, and no more. But,
if you ask me to stop--"

"I do not!" said the girl. "If you stop, you'll stop not because
I have any influence over you, but because you don't need my
influence. If it's wrong, if it's hurting you, if it's taking away
your usefulness and your power for good, that's why you'll stop.
Not because a girl begs you. Or you're not the man I think you."

Aintree retorted warmly. "I'm enough of a man for this," he
protested: "I'm enough of a man not to confess I can't drink
without making a beast of myself. It's easy not to drink at all.
But to stop altogether is a confession of weakness. I'd look on
my doing that as cowardly. I give you my word--not that I'll swear
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