for them except as bookkeepers or
pedagogues or newspaper reporters. Meantime the incessant unintellectual
activity is only a sublime bore to those who stand aside."

"Then why stand aside?" persisted the downright Harry.

"I have no place in it but a lounging-place," said Malbone. "I do not
wish to chop blocks with a razor. I envy those men, born mere Americans,
with no ambition in life but to 'swing a railroad' as they say at the
West. Every morning I hope to wake up like them in the fear of God and
the love of money."

"You may as well stop," said Harry, coloring a little. "Malbone, you
used to be my ideal man in my boyhood, but"--

"I am glad we have got beyond that," interrupted the other, cheerily,
"I am only an idler in the land. Meanwhile, I have my little
interests,--read, write, sketch--"

"Flirt?" put in Hal, with growing displeasure.

"Not now," said Phil, patting his shoulder, with imperturbable
good-nature. "Our beloved has cured me of that. He who has won the pearl
dives no more."

"Do not let us speak of Hope," said Harry. "Everything that you have
been asserting Hope's daily life disproves."

"That may be," answered Malbone, heartily. "But, Hal, I never flirted;
I always despised it. It was always a grande passion with me, or what
I took for such. I loved to be loved, I suppose; and there was always
something new and fascinating to be explored in a human heart, that is,
a woman's."

"Some new temple to profane?" asked Hal severely.

"Never!" said Philip. "I never profaned it. If I deceived, I shared the
deception, at least for a time; and, as for sensuality, I had none in
me."

"Did you have nothing worse? Rousseau ends where Tom Jones begins."

"My temperament saved me," said Philip. "A woman is not a woman to me,
without personal refinement."

"Just what Rousseau said," replied Harry.

"I acted upon it," answered Malbone. "No one dislikes Blanche Ingleside
and her demi monde more than I."

"You ought not," was the retort. "You help to bring other girls to her
level."

"Whom?" said Malbone, startled.

"Emilia."

"Emilia?" repeated the other, coloring crimson. "I, who have warned her
against Blanche's society."

"And have left her no other resource," said Harry, coloring still more.
"Malbone, you have gained (unconsciously of course) too much power
over that girl, and the only effect of it is, to keep her in perpetual
excitement. So she seeks Blanche, as she would any other st