What it cost Manley Fleetwood to abstain absolutely and without even the
compromise of "soft" drinks that night, who can say? Three years of free
living in Montana had lowered his standard of morality without giving him
that rugged strength of mind which makes a man master of himself first of
all. He had that day lain, drunken and sleeping, when he should have been
at his mental and physical best to meet the girl who would marry him. It
was that very defection, perhaps, which kept him sober in the midst of his
taunting fellows. Now that Valeria was actually here, and was his wife, he
was possessed by the desire to make some sacrifice by which he might prove
his penitence. At any cost he would spare her pain and humiliation, he told
himself.

He did it, and he did it under difficulty. He was denied the moral support
of Kent Burnett, for Kent was sulking over his slight, and would have
nothing to say to him. He was jeered unmercifully by Fred De Garmo and his
crowd. He was "baptized" by some drunken reveler, so that the stench of
spilled whisky filled his nostrils and tortured him the night through.
He was urged, he was bullied, he was ridiculed. His head throbbed, his
eyeballs burned. But through it all he stayed among them because he feared
that if he left them and went to Val, some drunken fool might follow him
and shock her with his inebriety. He stayed, and he stayed sober. Val was
his wife. She trusted him, and she was ignorant of his sins. If he went to
her staggering and babbling incoherent foolishness, he knew it would break
her heart.

When the sky was at last showing faint dawn tints and the clamor had worn
itself out perforce--because even the leaders were, after all, but men, and
there was a limit to their endurance--Manley entered the parlor, haggard
enough, it is true, and bearing with him the stale odor of cigars long