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