ust because he can keep the commandments.
It is just because he does not want to kill but to excite to life
that a pistol is still as exciting to him as it is to a schoolboy.
It is just because he does not want to steal, because he does not covet
his neighbour's goods, that he has captured the trick (oh, how we all
long for it!), the trick of coveting his own goods. It is just because
he does not want to commit adultery that he achieves the romance of sex;
it is just because he loves one wife that he has a hundred honeymoons.
If he had really murdered a man, if he had really deserted a woman,
he would not be able to feel that a pistol or a love-letter was like a song--
at least, not a comic song."

"Do not imagine, please, that any such attitude is easy
to me or appeals in any particular way to my sympathies.
I am an Irishman, and a certain sorrow is in my bones, bred either
of the persecutions of my creed, or of my creed itself.
Speaking singly, I feel as if man was tied to tragedy,
and there was no way out of the trap of old age and doubt.
But if there is a way out, then, by Christ and St. Patrick,
this is the way out. If one could keep as happy as a child or a dog,
it would be by being as innocent as a child, or as sinless as a dog.
Barely and brutally to be good--that may be the road, and he may have
found it. Well, well, well, I see a look of skepticism on the face
of my old friend Moses. Mr. Gould does not believe that being
perfectly good in all respects would make a man merry."

"No," said Gould, with an unusual and convincing gravity;
"I do not believe that being perfectly good in all respects
would make a man merry."

"Well," said Michael quietly, "will you tell me one thing?
Which of us has ever tried it?"

A silence ensued, rather like the silence of some long geological
epoch which awaits the emergence of some unexpected type;
for there rose at last in the stillness a massive figure
that the other men had almost completely forgotten.

"Well, gentlemen," said Dr. Warner cheerfully, "I've been pretty
well entertained with all this pointless and incompetent tomfoolery
for a couple of days; but it seems to be wearing rather thin,
and I'm engaged for a city dinner. Among the hundred flowers
of futility on both sides I was unable to detect any sort of reason
why a lunatic should be allowed to shoot me in the back garden."

He had settled his silk hat on his head and gone out sailing placidly to
the