mphant aspiration of Humanity. Man triumphs by
asserting his right to do so. Self-consciousness he claims as a good
thing, and embraces the world as his birthright. Here, you see, there
is no room for the crushing sense of sin. Sin, if anything, is
weakness. Let us rejoice in our strength, whilst we have it. The end of
course will come, but it is a wise man's part not to heed the
inevitable. Let us live whilst it is called to-day; we shall go to
sleep with all the better conscience for having used the hours of
daylight."

Maud listened with head bent.

"My own temperament," Waymark went on, "is, I suppose, exceptional, at
all events among men who have an inner life. I never knew what goes by
the name of religious feeling; impulses of devotion, in the common
sense of the phrase, have always been strange to me. I have known fear
at the prospect of death; religious consolation, never. Sin, above all,
has been a word without significance to me. As a boy, it was so; it is
so still, now that I am self-conscious. I have never been a deep
student of philosophy, but the doctrine of philosophical necessity, the
idea of Fate, is with me an instinct. I know that I could not have
acted otherwise than I did in any juncture of my life; I know that the
future is beyond my control. I shall do this, and avoid that, simply
owing to a preponderance of motives, which I can gauge, but not
control. Certain things I hate and shrink from; but I try to avoid,
even in thought, such words as vice and crime; the murderer could not
help himself, and the saint has no merit in his sanctity. Does all this
seem horrible to you?"

Maud raised her eyes, and looked steadily at him, but did not speak. It
was the gaze of one who tries humbly to understand, and longs to
sympathise. But there was a shadow of something like fear upon her face.

Waymark spoke with more earnestness.

"You will not think me incapable of what we call noble thought and
feeling? I have in me the elements of an enthusiast; they might have
led me to strange developments, but for that cold, critical spirit
which makes me so intensely self-conscious. This restless scepticism
has often been to me a torment in something the same way as that burden
of which you speak. Often, often, I would so gladly surrender myself to
my instincts of passion and delight. I may change; I may perhaps some
day attain rest in an absolute ideal. If I do, it will be through the
help of one who shall become