"Sure you are! Medicine's working, that's all. We strive to please, we
kill to cure. Of course it hurts, man! But you know it will do you good;
you know what I say is true. You've no right to club the natural and
healthy inclinations out of yourself. The day for fanatics and dippy,
dotty flagellants is past. Fox's martyrs are out of date. The man who
grabs life in both fists and twists the essence out of it, counts. He is
living as he ought to, he is doing the square thing by his country and
his community--by every man, woman, and child in it! He's giving
everybody, including himself, a square deal. But the man who has been
upper-cut and floored, and who takes the count, and then goes and squats
in a corner to brood over the fancy licks that Fate handed him--_he_
isn't dealing fairly and squarely by his principles or by a decent and
generous world that stands to back him for the next round. Is he, Phil?"

"Do you mean to say, Boots, that you think a man who has made the
ghastly mess of his life that I have, ought to feel free to marry?"

"Think it! Man, I know it. Certainly you ought to marry if you
wish--but, above all, you ought to feel free to marry. That is the
essential equipment of a man; he isn't a man if he feels that he isn't
free to marry. He may not want to do it, he may not be in love. That's
neither here nor there; the main thing is that he is as free as a man
should be to take any good opportunity--and marriage is included in the
list of good opportunities. If you become a slave to morbid notions, no
wonder you are depressed. Slaves usually are. Do you want to slink
through life? Then shake yourself, I tell you; learn to understand that
you're free to do what any decent man may do. That will take the
morbidness out of you. That will colour life for you. I don't say go
hunting for some one to love; I do say, don't avoid her when you meet