pect, viciousness would mean wretchedness. Self-
sacrifice itself is only a subtle selfishness: we prefer the mental
exaltation gained thereby to the sensual gratification which is the
alternative reward. Man cannot be anything else but selfish. Selfishness
is the law of all life. Each thing, from the farthest fixed star to the
smallest insect crawling on the earth, fighting for itself according to
its strength; and brooding over all, the Eternal, working for _Himself_:
that is the universe."

"Have some whisky," said MacShaughnassy; "and don't be so complicatedly
metaphysical. You make my head ache."

"If all action, good and bad, spring from selfishness," replied Brown,
"then there must be good selfishness and bad selfishness: and your bad
selfishness is my plain selfishness, without any adjective, so we are
back where we started. I say selfishness--bad selfishness--is the root
of all evil, and there you are bound to agree with me."

"Not always," persisted Jephson; "I've known selfishness--selfishness
according to the ordinarily accepted meaning of the term--to be
productive of good actions. I can give you an instance, if you like."

"Has it got a moral?" asked MacShaughnassy, drowsily,

Jephson mused a moment. "Yes," he said at length; "a very practical
moral--and one very useful to young men."

"That's the sort of story we want," said the MacShaughnassy, raising
himself into a sitting position. "You listen to this, Brown."

Jephson seated himself upon a chair, in his favourite attitude, with his
elbows resting upon the back, and smoked for a while in silence.

"There are three people in this story," he began; "the wife, the wife's
husband, and the other man. In most dramas of this type, it is the wife
who is the chief character. In this case, the interesting person is the
other man.

"The wife--I met her once: she was the most beautiful woman I have ever
seen, and the most wicked-looking; which is saying a good deal for both
statements. I remember, during a walking tour one year, coming across a
lovely little cottage. It was the sweetest place imaginable. I need not
describe it. It was the cottage one sees in pictures, and reads of in
sentimental poetry. I was leaning over the neatly-cropped hedge,
drinking in its beauty, when at one of the tiny casements I saw, looking
out at me, a face. It stayed there only a moment, but in that moment the
cottage had become ugly, and I hurried away with