e drew him out to talk
about himself, about his motives. She listened always in apparent cool
indifference, always in keen, hard interest under the surface she chose
to wear. She never forgot that she had sold to him for twenty-five
thousand dollars property for which she would not now accept twice that
amount and which he would not relinquish for such a sum. She never
forgot that, legally, she had no hope of regaining it. But there would
be a way, when she came to know the man utterly, when she came to feel
out every nerve of his moral being. She tried to make him talk freely
about himself by the one method which must remain infallible as long as
Sledge Hume was Sledge Hume, by cool criticism of him.

One day as they idled in her living room she told him abruptly that he
was the most selfish man she had ever known. Her smile, as near a
sneer as a smile may be and not become unlovely, the tapping of her
French slipper, did not cease during his rather lengthy rejoinder.

"Selfish?" he had answered roughly. "Of course I am. Who isn't? You
mean that I am the only man you know who isn't afraid to say so! All
creation is selfish; selfishness is the keynote of progress, of
evolution, of any sort of success. It begins with the lowest forms of
life where each single celled unit takes what it needs for its own
good; it is the thing which keeps life in the four footed world; it is
the highest concern of the priest who while he pretends to serve mere
man and a mythological Saviour never loses sight of his own reward at
the end of it. It is the basic principle underlying all religion; take
out of it the personal, selfish consideration, 'Be good and you can go
to Heaven! be bad and go to Hell!' and your whole religion falls to
pieces. Take selfishness out of the world and the world will stagnate
and rot."

"I have never heard you wax so eloquent in your own defence!"

"I am not defending myself, I am explaining. I am showing you the
difference between yourself and me. I see things as they are; you look
at them obliquely. You wouldn't admit it, but you are as selfish as I
am."

"The difference is that you are the more honest?"

"Both with myself and the world, yes."

"You pride yourself on your honesty?"

"I don't take the trouble to dissimulate."

"You have never done anything which you have kept hidden?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I have never found it necessary to make the world my father confessor.