He puts his hand in his pocket, and bids with security for every joy of body and mind; even death he faces with the comforting consciousness that his defeat will only coincide with that of human science.  He buys culture, he buys peace of mind, he buys love.—­You think not!  I don’t use the word cynically, but in very virtuous earnest.  Make me a millionaire, and I will purchase the passionate devotion of any free-hearted woman the world contains!”

Waymark’s pipe had gone out; he re-lit it, with the half-mocking smile which always followed upon any more vehement utterance.

“That I am poor,” he went on presently, “is the result of my own pigheadedness.  My father was a stock-broker, in anything but flourishing circumstances.  He went in for some cursed foreign loan or other,—­I know nothing of such things,—­and ruined himself completely.  He had to take a subordinate position, and died in it.  I was about seventeen then, and found myself alone in the world.  A friend of my father’s, also a city man, Woodstock by name, was left my guardian.  He wanted me to begin a business career, and, like a fool, I wouldn’t hear of it.  Mr. Woodstock and I quarrelled; he showed himself worthy of his name, and told me plainly that, if I didn’t choose to take his advice, I must shift for myself.  That I professed myself perfectly ready to do; I was bent on an intellectual life, forsooth; couldn’t see that the natural order of things was to make money first and be intellectual afterwards.  So, lad as I was, I got a place as a teacher, and that’s been my business ever since.”

Waymark threw himself back and laughed carelessly.  He strummed a little with his fingers on the arm of the chair, and resumed: 

“I interested myself in religion and philosophy; I became an aggressive disciple of free-thought, as it is called.  Radicalism of every kind broke out in me, like an ailment.  I bought cheap free-thought literature; to one or two papers of the kind I even contributed.  I keep these effusions carefully locked up, for salutary self-humiliation at some future day, when I shall have grown conceited.  Nay, I went further.  I delivered lectures at working-men’s clubs, lectures with violent titles.  One, I remember, was called ‘The Gospel of Rationalism.’  And I was enthusiastic in the cause, with an enthusiasm such as I shall never experience again.  Can I imagine myself writing and speaking such things now-a-days?  Scarcely:  yet the spirit remains, it is only the manifestations which have changed.  I am by nature combative; I feel the need of attacking the cherished prejudices of society; I have a joy in outraging what are called the proprieties.  And I wait for my opportunity, which has yet to come.”

“How commonplace my life has been, in comparison,” said Julian, after an interval of thoughtfulness.

“Your nature, I believe, is very pure, and therefore very happy. I am what Browning somewhere calls a ‘beast with a speckled hide,’ and happiness, I take it, I shall never know.”