e and pedalled past me
deliberately. He meant to cut me. Of course I know that just before my
trial in London he took my name off the bill of my comedy, though he
went on playing it. But I was not angry with him for that, though he
might have behaved as well as Wyndham,[29] who owed me nothing, don't
you think?

"Here there was nobody to see him, yet he cut me. What brutes men are!
They not only punish me as a society, but now they are trying as
individuals to punish me, and after all I have not done worse than they
do. What difference is there between one form of sexual indulgence and
another? I hate hypocrisy and hypocrites! Think of Alexander, who made
all his money out of my works, cutting me, Alexander! It is too ignoble.
Wouldn't you be angry, Frank?"

"I daresay I should be," I replied coolly, hoping the incident would be
a spur to him.

"I've always wondered why you gave Alexander a play? Surely you didn't
think him an actor?"

"No, no!" he exclaimed, a sudden smile lighting up his face; "Alexander
doesn't act on the stage; he behaves. But wasn't it mean of him?"

I couldn't help smiling, the dart was so deserved.

"Begin another play," I said, "and the Alexanders will immediately go on
their knees to you again. On the other hand, if you do nothing you may
expect worse than discourtesy. Men love to condemn their neighbours' pet
vice. You ought to know the world by this time."

He did not even notice the hint to work, but broke out angrily:

"What you call vice, Frank, is not vice: it is as good to me as it was
to Caesar, Alexander, Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It was first of all
made a sin by monasticism, and it has been made a crime in recent times,
by the Goths--the Germans and English--who have done little or nothing
since to refine or exalt the ideals of humanity. They all damn the sins
they have no mind to, and that's their morality. A brutal race; they
overeat and overdrink and condemn the lusts of the flesh, while
revelling in all the vilest sins of the spirit. If they would read the
23rd chapter of St. Matthew and apply it to themselves, they would learn
more than by condemning a pleasure they don't understand. Why, even
Bentham refused to put what you call a 'vice' in his penal code, and you
yourself admitted that it should not be punished as a crime; for it
carries no temptation with it. It may be a malady; but, if so, it
appears only to attack the highest natures. It is disgraceful to punis