perhaps?" she said.

"That could not hurt me," he answered, "for, thank Heaven! I am no
philosopher, and never take facts seriously. Circumstances, my dear
Lady Locke, are the lashes laid into us by life. Some of us have to
receive them with bared ivory backs, and others are permitted to keep on
a coat--that is the only difference."

"Are you a pessimist?" she asked.

"I hope so. I look upon optimism as a most quaint disease, an eruption
that breaks out upon the soul, and destroys all its interest, all its
beauty. The optimist dresses up the amazing figures of life like Dresden
shepherds and shepherdesses, and pipes a foolish tune--the Old Hundredth
or some such thing--for them to dance to. We cannot all refuse to see
anything but comic opera peasants around us."

"Yet we need not replace them with pantomime demons."

"Demons, as you call them, are much more interesting. Nothing is so
unattractive as goodness, except, perhaps, a sane mind in a sane body.
Even the children find the fairies monotonous, I believe. An eternal
smile is much more wearisome than a perpetual frown. The one sweeps away
all possibilities, the other suggests a thousand."

"Every one of them sinister."

"Why not? Where would be the drama without the crime? The clash of
swords is the music of the world. People talk so much to me about the
beauty of confidence. They seem to entirely ignore the much more subtle
beauty of doubt. To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely
engrossing. The Apostle Thomas was artistic up to a certain point. He
appreciated the value of shadows in a picture. To be on the alert is to
live. To be lulled in security is to die."

"But if you pushed that amusing theory to its limits you would arrive at
the contradiction in terms--to be happy is to be miserable."

"Certainly. To be what is commonly called happy is a mental complaint
demanding careful treatment. The happy people of the world have their
value, but only the negative value of foils. They throw up and emphasise
the beauty, and the fascination of the unhappy. Scarlet and black are
the finest of all the colours. And to cease to doubt is to despair--for
a really talented man or woman. That is why people become sceptics. They
desire to save themselves from intellectual annihilation."

"Yet the mental pleasure of proving a case may be keen."

"But it cannot be lasting. You do not see the delight that must attend
upon conjecture. Let me put it to you in anoth