he felt himself criminal, to be playing with beautiful toys
whilst a whole world lived only to sweat and starve. The appeal of the
miserable seemed to be to him personally. It is what certain sects call
conversion in religion, a truth addressing itself with unwonted and
invincible force to the individual soul.'

'And you, too, were a Socialist?'

'At that age and under those conditions it was right and good. I should
have been void of feeling and imagination otherwise. Such convictions
are among relative truths. To be a social enthusiast is in itself
neither right nor wrong, neither praiseworthy nor the opposite; it is a
state to be judged in relation to the other facts of a man's life.
You will never know that state; if you affected it you would be purely
contemptible. And I myself have outgrown it.'

'But you must not think that I am inhuman,' said Hubert. 'The sight of
distress touches me deeply. To the individual poor man or woman I would
give my last penny. It is when they rise against me as a class that I
become pitiless.'

'I understand you perfectly, though I have not the same prejudices. My
old zeal lingers with me in the form of tolerance. I can enter into the
mind of a furious proletarian as easily as into the feeling which you
represent.'

'But how did your zeal come to an end?'

'In this way; I worked under the conditions I have described to you till
I was nearly thirty. Then. I broke down physically. At the same time it
happened that I inherited a small competency. I went abroad, lived in
Italy for a couple of years. I left England with the firm intention
of getting my health and then returning to work harder than ever. But
during those two years I educated myself. When I reached England again
I found that it was impossible to enter again on the old path; I should
have had to force myself; it would have been an instance of the kind of
thing you suggest in explanation of Westlake's persistence. Fortunately
I yielded to my better sense and altogether shunned the life of towns.
I was no longer of those who seek to change the world, but of those who
are content that it should in substance remain as it is.'

'But how can you be content, if you are convinced that the majority of
men live only to suffer?'

'It is, you who attribute the conviction to me,' said the vicar, smiling
good-naturedly. 'My conviction is the very opposite. One of the pet
theories I have developed for myself in recent years is, tha