ine d'you drink?"

"None, thank you. I'm a teetotaller. In my profession and _milieu_ it is
necessary to be one. Yes, I will have some soda water. I think you would
have done the first."

"Very likely, and very wrongly. You wouldn't have minded much."

"I don't think I should."

They were intimate already. The Father felt most pleasantly at home
under the black ceiling. He drank some soda water and seemed to enjoy
it more than the Professor enjoyed his claret.

"You smile at the theory of the chain of human sympathy, I see," said
the Father. "Then what is your explanation of the failure of your square
party with corners, the success of your oval party without them?"

"Probably on the first occasion the wit of the assembly had a chill on
his liver, while on the second he was in perfect health. Yet, you see, I
stick to the oval table."

"And that means----"

"Very little. By the way, your omission of any allusion to the notorious
part liver plays in love was a serious one to-night."

"Your omission of any desire for close human sympathy in your life is a
more serious one."

"How can you be sure I have no such desire?"

"I divine it. Your look, your manner, tell me it is so. You were
disagreeing with my sermon all the time I was preaching. Weren't you?"

"Part of the time."

The servant changed the plates. He was a middle-aged, blond, thin man,
with a stony white face, pale, prominent eyes, and an accomplished
manner of service. When he had left the room the Professor continued,

"Your remarks interested me, but I thought them exaggerated."

"For instance?"

"Let me play the egoist for a moment. I spend most of my time in hard
work, very hard work. The results of this work, you will allow, benefit
humanity."

"Enormously," assented the Father, thinking of more than one of
Guildea's discoveries.

"And the benefit conferred by this work, undertaken merely for its own
sake, is just as great as if it were undertaken because I loved my
fellow man and sentimentally desired to see him more comfortable than he
is at present. I'm as useful precisely in my present condition of--in my
present non-affectional condition--as I should be if I were as full of
gush as the sentimentalists who want to get murderers out of prison, or
to put a premium on tyranny--like Tolstoi--by preventing the punishment
of tyrants."

"One may do great harm with affection; great good without it. Yes, that
is true. Even _le bon motif_