celebrity--the sacrifice of one man for the benefit of his fellows, been
recognized as the noblest exposition of heroism? Now, although it is
much to give up life for the advantage of others, it is far more to
surrender one's identity, to abandon that grand capital Ego! which gives
a man his self-esteem and suggests his self-preservation. And who, I
would ask, does this so thoroughly as the man who everlastingly palms
himself upon the world for that which he is not? According to the
greatest happiness principle, this man may be a real boon to humanity.
He feeds this one with hope, the other with flattery; he bestows courage
on the weak, confidence on the wavering. The rich man can give of his
abundance, but it is out of his very poverty this poor fellow has
to bestow all. Like the spider, he has to weave his web from his
own vitals, and like the same spider he may be swept away by some
pretentious affectation of propriety."

While I thus argued, the waiter came in to serve dinner. It looked
all appetizing and nice; but I could not touch a morsel. I was sick at
heart; Kate Herbert's last look as she quitted the room was ever before
me. Those dark gray eyes--which you stupid folk will go on calling
blue--have a sort of reproachful power in them very remarkable. They
don't flash out in anger like black eyes, or sparkle in fierceness like
hazel; but they emit a sort of steady, fixed, concentrated light, that
seems to imply that they have looked thoroughly into you, and come back
very sad and very sorry for the inquiry. I thought of the happy days I
had passed beside her; I recalled her low and gentle voice, her sweet
half-sad smile, and her playful laugh, and I said, "Have I lost all
these forever, and how? What stupid folly possessed me last evening?
How could I have been so idiotic as not to see that I was committing the
rankest of all enormities? How should I, in my insignificance, dare to
assail the barriers and defences which civilization has established,
and guards amongst its best prerogatives? Was this old buffoon, was this
piece of tawdry fringe and spangles, a fitting company for that fair and
gentle girl? How artistically false, too, was the position I had taken!
Interweaving into my ideal life these coarse realities, was the same
sort of outrage as shocks one in some of the Venetian churches, where
a lovely Madonna, the work of a great hand, may be seen bedizened
and disfigured with precious stones over her dra