“If the healed aren’t grateful,” observed Ralph, thoughtfully, “it must be in some way my fault, or else they haven’t fully understood.  And I’d go ten miles to take a pin out of a baby’s back—­yes, I’m sure I would.”

Anthony Dexter’s face softened, almost imperceptibly.  “It’s youth,” he said, “and youth is a fault we all get over soon enough, Heaven knows.  When you’re forty, you’ll see that the whole thing is a matter of business and that, in the last analysis, we’re working against Nature’s laws.  We endeavour to prolong the lives of the unfit, when only the fittest should survive.”

“That makes me think of something else,” continued Ralph, in a low tone.  “Yesterday, I canvassed the township to get a cat for Araminta—­the poor child never had a kitten.  Nobody would let me have one till I got far away from home, and, even then, it was difficult.  They thought I wanted it for—­for the laboratory,” he concluded, almost in a whisper.

“Yes?” returned Doctor Dexter, with a rising inflection.  “I could have told you that the cat and dog supply was somewhat depleted hereabouts—­through my own experiments.”

“Father!” cried Ralph, his face eloquent with reproach.

Laughing, yet secretly ashamed, Anthony Dexter began to speak.  “Surely, Ralph,” he said, “you’re not so womanish as that.  If I’d known they taught such stuff as that at my old Alma Mater, I’d have sent you somewhere else.  Who’s doing it?  What old maid have they added to their faculty?”

“Oh, I know, Father,” interrupted Ralph, waiving discussion.  “I’ve heard all the arguments, but, unfortunately, I have a heart.  I don’t know by what right we assume that human life is more precious than animal life; by what right we torture and murder the fit in order to prolong the lives of the unfit, even if direct evidence were obtainable in every case, which it isn’t.  Anyhow, I can’t do it, I never have done it, and I never will.  I recognise your individual right to shape your life in accordance with the dictates of your own conscience, but, because I’m your son, I can’t help being ashamed.  A man capable of torturing an animal, no matter for what purpose, is also capable of torturing a fellow human being, for purposes of his own.”

Anthony Dexter’s face suddenly blanched with anger, then grew livid.  “You—­” he began, hotly.

“Don’t, Father,” interrupted Ralph.  “We’ll not have any words.  We’ll not let a difference of opinion on any subject keep us from being friends.  Perhaps it’s because I’m young, as you say, but, all the time I was at college, I felt that I had something to lean on, some standard to shape myself to.  Mother died so soon after I was born that it is almost as if I had not had a mother.  I haven’t even a childish memory of her, and, perhaps for that reason, you meant more to me than the other fellows’ fathers did to them.

“When I was tempted to any wrongdoing, the thought of you always held me back.  ‘Father wouldn’t do it,’ I said to myself.  ’Father always does the square thing, and I’m his son.’  I remembered that our name means ‘right.’  So I never did it.”