“Your views, Lord Arranmore,” Brooks said, “are excellent for a model world.  For practical purposes I think they are a little pedantic.  You are quite right in your idea that charity is a great danger.  I can assure you that we are trying to realize that in Medchester.  We ask for money, and we dispense it unwillingly, but as a necessary evil.  And we are trying to earnestly see where our social system is at fault, and to readjust it.  But meanwhile, men and women and children even are starving.  We must help them.”

“That is where you are wholly wrong, and where you retard all progress,” Arranmore remarked.  “Can’t you see that you are continually plugging up dangerous leaks with putty instead of lead?  You muffle the cry which but for you must ring through the land, and make itself heard to every one.  Let the people starve who are without means.  Legislation would stir itself fast enough then.  It is the only way.  Charity to individuals is poison to the multitude.  You create the criminal classes with your charities, you blindfold statesmen and mislead political economists.  I tell you that the more you give away the more distress you create.”

Brooks rose from his seat.

“Charity is older than nations or history, Lord Arranmore,” he said, “and I am foolish enough to think that the world is a better place for it.  Your reasoning is very excellent, but life has not yet become an exact science.  The weaknesses of men and women have to be considered.  You have probably never seen a starving person.”

Lord Arranmore laughed, and Brooks looked across the room at him in amazement.  The Marquis was always pale, but his pallor just then was as unnatural as the laugh itself.

“My dear young man,” he said, “if I could show you what I have seen your hair would turn grey, and your wits go wandering.  Do you think that I know nothing of life save its crust?  I tell you that I have been down in the depths, aye, single-handed, there in the devil’s own cauldron, where creatures in the shape of men and women, the very sight of whom would turn you sick with horror, creep like spawn through life, brainless and soulless, foul things who would murder one another for the sake of a crust, or—­Bah!  What horrible memories.”

He broke off abruptly.  When he spoke again his tone was as usual.

“Come,” he said, “I mustn’t let you have this journey for nothing.  After all, the only luxury in having principles is in the departing from them.  I will give you a cheque, Mr. Brooks, only I beg you to think over what I have said.  Abandon this doling principle as soon as it is possible.  Give your serious attention to the social questions and imperfect laws which are at the back of all this distress.”

Brooks felt as though he had been awakened from a nightmare.  He never forgot that single moment of revelation on the part of the man who sat now smiling and debonair before his writing-table.