And there was the
allurement, the gathering of the data; the great critical point where
purity reaches dreamy hands towards pitch and refuses to call it
pitch--till defiled. No; Vance Corliss was not a cad. And since
purity is merely a relative term, he was not pure. That there was no
pitch under his nails was not because he had manicured diligently, but
because it had not been his luck to run across any pitch. He was not
good because he chose to be, because evil was repellant; but because he
had not had opportunity to become evil. But from this, on the other
hand, it is not to be argued that he would have gone bad had he had a
chance.
He was a product of the sheltered life. All his days had been lived in
a sanitary dwelling; the plumbing was excellent. The air he had
breathed had been mostly ozone artificially manufactured. He had been
sun-bathed in balmy weather, and brought in out of the wet when it
rained. And when he reached the age of choice he had been too fully
occupied to deviate from the straight path, along which his mother had
taught him to creep and toddle, and along which he now proceeded to
walk upright, without thought of what lay on either side.
Vitality cannot be used over again. If it be expended on one thing,
there is none left for the other thing. And so with Vance Corliss.
Scholarly lucubrations and healthy exercises during his college days
had consumed all the energy his normal digestion extracted from a
wholesome omnivorous diet.
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