know anybody stand on their
rights except out of wounded pride or for the sake of their own comfort?
Let them call their reasons what they like, you know as well as I do that
it's cant."

"I don't know about that," said Halidome, more and more superior as
Shelton grew more warm; "when you stand on your rights, you do it for the
sake of Society as well as for your own. If you want to do away with
marriage, why don't you say so?"

"But I don't," said Shelton, "is it likely? Why, I'm going--" He
stopped without adding the words "to be married myself," for it suddenly
occurred to him that the reason was not the most lofty and philosophic in
the world. "All I can say is," he went on soberly, "that you can't make
a horse drink by driving him. Generosity is the surest way of tightening
the knot with people who've any sense of decency; as to the rest, the
chief thing is to prevent their breeding."

Halidome smiled.

"You're a rum chap," he said.

Shelton jerked his cigarette into the fire.

"I tell you what"--for late at night a certain power of vision came to
him--"it's humbug to talk of doing things for the sake of Society; it's
nothing but the instinct to keep our own heads above the water."

But Halidome remained unruffled.

"All right," he said, "call it that. I don't see why I should go to the
wall; it wouldn't do any good."

"You admit, then," said Shelton, "that our morality is the sum total of
everybody's private instinct of self-preservation?"

Halidome stretched his splendid frame and yawned.

"I don't know," he began, "that I should quite call it that--"

But the compelling complacency of his fine eyes, the dignified posture of
his healthy body, the lofty slope of his narrow forehead, the perfectly
humane look of his cultivated brutality, struck Shelton as ridiculous.

"Hang it, Hall" he cried, jumping from his chair, "what an old fraud you
are! I'll be off."

"No, look here!" said Halidome; the faintest shade of doubt had appeared
upon his face; he took Shelton by a lapel: "You're quite wrong--"

"Very likely; good-night, old chap!"

Shelton walked home, letting the spring wind into him. It was Saturday,
and he passed many silent couples. In every little patch of shadow he
could see two forms standing or sitting close together, and in their
presence Words the Impostors seemed to hold their tongues. The wind
rustled the buds; the stars, one moment bright as diamonds, vanished the
next.