making
it worse because he was adding to its beauty?"

Gordon's intent gaze and the solemn, eager earnestness with which he
spoke appalled his listener ever so little. It was as if he were
asking these questions from his inmost, deepest heart.

"I--I don't know just what to say," she faltered. "I never thought of
the matter in that way before. One doesn't like to answer so serious a
question offhand. But--" she hesitated and felt herself being swept
into agreement by his very forcefulness of character and intensity of
feeling. "Why, yes--I suppose you are right. If the world were
entirely wicked it would be a failure, no matter how beautiful it
might be."

"I was sure you would agree with me," he responded with a look of
pleased satisfaction. "But now I want you to tell me something else,"
he pursued in a gentler tone and with a humbler, softer manner. "I
want to suppose the case of two possible men and I want you to tell me
which of the two you think would be the more deserving of life."

He moved closer to her and, leaning against the deck rail, was looking
into her face with an expression so different from any she had ever
seen in his brown eyes before, wistful and beseeching instead of
confident, alert and dauntless, that it set her heart a-flutter with a
sudden, tantalizing half-memory. Where, when, had she seen brown eyes
with that look in them?

She groped after the answer in the back of her mind while she listened
to his voice, still with its impetuous tones unsubdued, though he
seemed to be trying to state his hypothetical case in cool, bare
terms.

"Suppose there were two men," he was saying, "and suppose that one of
them possessed a genius for the creation of noble and beautiful works
of art of any sort, which would afford great pleasure to many people
and would refine and elevate their tastes. But suppose that at the
same time he was living such a private, even secret, life as made him
a source of wickedness and corruption, an endless influence for evil.
Then would such a man, do you think--" his voice sank lower and
thrilled with solemn earnestness--"deserve to live rather than the
other one, who, though he had no genius for the creation of beauty,
was using all his powers to make the world a better place for all men
to live in? If both men could not have the gift of life, Miss Marne,
which do you think ought to have it?"

She looked at him, glanced away, and hesitated, her mind still bent on
that