Armine, Chapter XV-XVII [pp. 685-708]

704 ARMIArE. [Aug.,
scandals. To dine, to dress, to drive, to cultivate distinguished
acquaintances and know the last items of fashionable gossipthese are its supreme ends; and where in them is there food
to satisfy an eager mind or an immortal soul? Suuoun~ded by
these trivialities, Sibyl had sought refuge in a literature which
fascinated her by the high ideal of human conduct which it pre.
sented, by tile teaching of an altruistic benevolence and of the
possible ultimate perfection of humanity. This ideal fired her
imagination and seemed to offer satisfaction to all the craving of
which she had been conscious-craving for some supreme and
noble end, the pursuit of which she felt to be necessary if life
was to be of value.
But when she looked around for the disciples who practised
these teachings of enthusiastic masters, whose eloquence and
genius have for a time blinded many to the baselessness of their
hopes, she found that instead of placing their happiness in the
happiness of others, and of directing every effort to the elevation of the race, men and women were going their old accustomed ways and only accepting that part of the teaching which
relieved them of responsibility to a higher power. Then came
the tempter, in the form of Marmaduke Talford, to declare with
a tone of assurance and authority: "You and all like you are
dreamers, who know nothing of the actual conditions of life.
Self-interest is, always has been, and always will be the basis of
men's deeds; and to fancy that any motive for conduct can be
devised strong enough to supplant self-interest is to fancy what
all past history and present experience belie. Accept, then, the
plain fact that the material goods of life are the only things of
which we can be certain, and its material pleasures the only objects worth our pursuit."
Now, it may readily be conceived that this was not a doctrine
likely to please one whose nature yearned strongly and passionately toward ideal good, unless in the recoil of disappointment to which such a nature is subject. And it was a recoil
which had set in strongly with Sibyl, as the impatient scorn
which puzzled Egerton abundantly testified. "Why do you
trifle away existence so ignobly? Why do not you, who are
free as only a man can be free, find some high task worthy of a
man's doing?" was the meaning that underlay all her contemptuous speeches. And it followed of necessity, had Egerton been
able to perceive it, that she would not have been inclined to
manifest this contempt~to one whom she had felt to be incapable
either of realizing or following the high intangible ideal that was