I suppose the doctor knows
best--but--well, it gets a hold on you when you are down on your luck."
"If it ever 'gets a hold' on me it will because I deliberately wish
it to," she said haughtily. "If Langdon Masters--has gone as far as
you say, I don't believe it is through any inherited weakness. He has
done it deliberately."
"I grant that. And I'm sorry if I offended you--"
"I am only grateful to you. I feel better now and can think a
little. Something must be done. Surely he can be saved."
"I doubt it. When a man starts scientifically drinking himself to
death nothing can be done when there is nothing better to offer him.
May I be frank?"
"I have been frank enough!"
"Masters told me nothing of course, but I heard all the talk. Old
Travers let out his part of it in his cups, and news travels from the
Clubs like water out of a sieve. We don't publish that sort of muck,
but there were innuendoes in that blackguard sheet, _The Boom_. They
stopped suddenly and I fancy the editor had a taste of the horsewhip.
It wouldn't be the first time.... When Masters sent for me and told me
he was leaving San Francisco for good and all, he looked like a man
who had been through Dore's Hell--was there still, for that matter. Of
course I knew what had happened; if I hadn't I'd have known it the
next day when I saw the doctor.
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