ch I
readily admit)," answered Sir Patrick, "I have surely a right to choose
which case I please for illustration. (Wait, Mr. Delamayn! These are
the last words I have to say and I mean to say them.) I have taken
the example--not of a specially depraved man, as you erroneously
suppose--but of an average man, with his average share of the mean,
cruel, and dangerous qualities, which are part and parcel of unreformed
human nature--as your religion tells you, and as you may see for
yourself, if you choose to look at your untaught fellow-creatures any
where. I suppose that man to be tried by a temptation to wickedness, out
of the common; and I show, to the best of my ability, how completely the
moral and mental neglect of himself, which the present material tone
of public feeling in England has tacitly encouraged, leaves him at the
mercy of all the worst instincts in his nature; and how surely, under
those conditions, he _must_ go down (gentleman as he is) step by
step--as the lowest vagabond in the streets goes down under _his_
special temptation--from the beginning in ignorance to the end in crime.
If you deny my right to take such an example as that, in illustration of
the views I advocate, you must either deny that a special temptation to
wickedness can assail a man in the position of a gentleman, or you must
assert that gentlemen who are naturally superior to all temptation are
the only gentlemen who devote themselves to athletic pursuits. There
is my defense. In stating my case, I have spoken out of my own sincere
respect for the interests of virtue and of learning; out of my own
sincere admiration for those young men among us who are resisting the
contagion of barbarism about them. In _their_ future is the future hope
of England. I have done."

Angrily ready with a violent personal reply, Geoffrey found himself
checked, in his turn by another person with something to say, and with a
resolution to say it at that particular moment.

For some little time past the surgeon had discontinued his steady
investigation of Geoffrey's face, and had given all his attention to the
discussion, with the air of a man whose self-imposed task had come to
an end. As the last sentence fell from the last speaker's lips, he
interposed so quickly and so skillfully between Geoffrey and Sir
Patrick, that Geoffrey himself was taken by surprise,

"There is something still wanting to make Sir Patrick's statement of the
case complete," he s