"I am going into the study shortly to decide that. Head bother you?"

"Occasionally."

"Ryan easy to get along with?"

"Rather a good sort. I say, you know, you've seen a good deal of
life. Which do you consider the stronger, the inherited traits or
environment?"

"Environment. That is the true mould. There is good and bad in all of
us. It is brought into prominence by the way we live. An angel cannot
touch pitch without becoming defiled. On the other hand, the worst
gutter rats in the world saved France. Do you suppose that thought will
not always be tugging at and uplifting those who returned from the first
Marne?"

"There is hope, then, for me!"

"Hope?"

"Yes. You know that my father, my uncle, and my grandfather were fine
scoundrels."

"Under their influence you would have been one, too. But no man could
live with Stefani Gregor and not absorb his qualities. Your environment
has been Anglo-Saxon, where the first block in the picture is fair
play. You have been constantly under the tutelage of a fine and lofty
personality, Gregor's. Whatever evil traits you may have inherited, they
have become subject to the influences that have surrounded you. Take
me, for instance. I was born in a rather puritanical atmosphere. My
environments have always been good. Yet there lurks in me the taint of
Macaire. Given the wrong environment, I should now have my picture in
the Rogues' Gallery."