unless he's very gifted in mind or very different when with her.
This must be true, and he would be a mummy indeed if she couldn't
wake him up."

Roger rode home, however, ill at ease. "He hasn't forgotten her
if he has given her up on account of her poverty," he thought.
"He could see as well as I that there was no one there who could
compare with her; but he mopes instead of trying to win her. If he
can dance, why can't he work? I've no reason to complain, however,
and I thank my stars that I have muscle and a will. In the meantime
I shall come up here and study your tricks of manner, my elegant
nonentity. I believe in force. Force moves the world and carries
a man through it; but I now see that it should be well-managed and
well-mannered force. Miss Jocelyn compares me with you, and I seem
to her uncouth, unfinished, and crude in the extreme. Litheness and
grace need not take an atom from my strength, and the time shall
come when I will not fear comparisons. I'll win her yet with your
own weapons."

Roger's dreams proved that his sympathies with the melancholy
stranger were not very deep, and that his idea of the survival of
the fittest was the survival of the strongest. His human nature at
that time was of the old Saxon type, that went directly for what
it wanted, without much thought or sentiment for those weak enough
to lose.

Although it was rather late before he reached home, he found his
mother, Mrs. Jocelyn, and Mildred waiting for him in the sitting-room.

"What kept you so?" Mrs. Atwood exclaimed.