“It is quite a fallacy,” he was saying, as he walked carelessly onwards, his head thrown forward a little, his hands clasped behind his back, his stick trailing after him, “it is altogether a fallacy to talk of the ‘complaining millions of men’ who ‘darken in labor and pain.’  It is the hard-working millions of mankind who are the happiest; their constant labor brings content; the riddle of the painful earth doesn’t vex them—­they have no leisure; they don’t fear the hour of sleep—­they welcome it.  It is the rich, who find time drag remorselessly on their hands, who have desperately to invent occupations and a whirl of amusements, who keep pursuing shadows they can never lay hold of, who are really in a piteous case; and I suppose you take credit to yourself, Linn, my boy, that you are one of the distractions that help them to lighten the unbearable weariness of their life.  Well,” he continued, in his rambling way, “it isn’t quite what I had looked forward to; I had looked forward to something different for you.  I can remember, when we used to have our long Sunday walks in those days, what splendid ambitions you had for yourself, and how you were all burning to begin—­the organist of Winstead Church was to produce his Hallelujah Chorus, and the nations were to listen; and the other night, when I was in your room at the theatre, when I saw you smearing your face and decking yourself out for exhibition before a lot of fashionable idlers, I could not help saying to myself, ’And this is what Linn Moore has come to!’”

“Yes, that is what Linn Moore has come to,” the other said, with entire good-nature.  “And what has Maurice Mangan come to?  I can remember when Maurice Mangan was to be a great poet, a great metaphysician, a great—­I don’t know what.  Winstead was far too small a place for him; he was to go up and conquer London, and do great and wonderful things.  And what is he now?—­a reporter of the gabble of the House of Commons.”

“I suppose I am a failure,” said this tall, thin, contemplative-looking man, who spoke quite dispassionately of himself, just as he spoke with a transparent honesty and simplicity of his friend.  “But at least I have kept myself to myself.  I haven’t sold myself over to the Moloch of fashion—­”

“Oh, your dislike of fashionable people is a mere bundle of prejudice!” Lionel cried.  “The truth is, Maurice, you don’t know those fashionable people you seem to despise so heartily.  If you did, you would discover that they had the ordinary human qualities of other people—­only that they are better educated and more courteous and pleasant in manner.  Then their benevolence—­if you knew how much they give away in charity—­”

“Benevolence!” Mangan broke in, impatiently.  “What is benevolence?  It is generally nothing more or less than an expression of your own satisfaction with yourself.  You are stuffed with food and wine; your purse is gorged; ’here’s a handful of sovereigns for you, you poor devil crouching at the corner!’ What merit is in that?  Do you call that a virtue?  But where charity really becomes a heroism, Linn, is when a poor, suffering, neuralgic woman, without any impulse from abundance of health or abundance of comfort, sets laboriously to work to do what she can for her fellow-creatures.  Then that is something to regard—­that is something to admire—­”