When the maid had appeared, disappeared, reappeared, and finally vanished, Atherton resumed. “The natural goodness doesn't count. The natural man is a wild beast, and his natural goodness is the amiability of a beast basking in the sun when his stomach is full. The Hubbards were full of natural goodness, I dare say, when they didn't happen to cross each other's wishes. No, it's the implanted goodness that saves,--the seed of righteousness treasured from generation to generation, and carefully watched and tended by disciplined fathers and mothers in the hearts where they have dropped it. The flower of this implanted goodness is what we call civilization, the condition of general uprightness that Halleck declared he owed no allegiance to. But he was better than his word.” Atherton lifted, with his slim, delicate hand, the cup of translucent china, and drained off the fragrant Souchong, sweetened, and tempered with Jersey cream to perfection. Something in the sight went like a pang to his wife's heart. “Ah!” she said, “it is easy enough for us to condemn. _We_ have everything we want!” “I don't forget that, Clara,” said Atherton, gravely. “Sometimes when I think of it, I am ready to renounce all judgment of others. The consciousness of our comfort, our luxury, almost paralyzes me at those times, and I am ashamed and afraid even of our happiness.” “Yes, what right,” pursued Clara, rebelliously, “have we to be happy and united, and these wretched creatures so--” “No right,--none in the world! But somehow the effects follow their causes. In some sort they chose misery for themselves,--we make our own hell in this life and the next,--or it was chosen for them by undisciplined wills that they inherited. In the long run their fate must be a just one.” “Ah, but I have to look at things in the _short_ run, and I can't see any justice in Marcia's husband using her so!” cried Clara. “Why shouldn't you use me badly? I don't believe that any woman ever meant better by her husband than she did.” “Oh, the meaning doesn't count! It's our deeds that judge us. He is a thoroughly bad fellow, but you may be sure she has been to blame. Though I don't blame the Hubbards, either of them, so much as I blame Halleck. He not only had everything he wished, but the training to know what he ought to wish.” “I don't know about his having everything. I think Ben must have been disappointed, some time,” said Clara, evasively. “Oh, that's nothing,” replied Atherton, with the contented husband's indifference to sentimental grievances. Clara did not speak for some moments, and then she summed up a turmoil of thoughts in a profound sigh. “Well, I don't like it! I thought it was bad enough having a man, even on the outskirts of my acquaintance, abandon his wife; but now Ben Halleck, who has been like a brother to me, to have him mixed up in such an affair in the way he is, it's intolerable!”