'No,' she said. 'I am very ignorant. Yet if I cannot understand, I can remember. The Way of Pleasure and the Way of Wealth. I shall remember. We are told that we must not set our hearts upon the things of this world. I used to think that it meant being too fond of pretty frocks and ribbons. Dorcas said so once. Since you have come I see that there are many, many things that I know nothing of. If I am to be dragged to them by ropes, I do not want to know them. The Way of Pleasure and the Way of Wealth. They destroy the artistic life,' she repeated, as if learning a lesson. 'These ways must be ways of Sin, don't you think?' she asked, looking up with curious eyes. Doubtless. Yet this is not quite the modern manner of regarding and speaking of the subject. And considering what an eighteenth-century and bourgeois-like manner it is, and how fond we now are of that remarkable century, one is surprised that the manner has not before now been revived. When we again tie our hair behind and assume silver-buckled shoes and white silk stockings, we shall once more adopt that manner. It was not, however, artificial with Armorel. The words fell naturally from her lips. A thing that was prejudicial to the better nature of a man must, she thought, belong to ways of Sin. Again--doubtless. But Roland did not think of it in that way, and the words startled him. 'Puritan!' he said. 'But you are always right. It is the instinct of your heart always to be right. But we no longer talk that language. It is a hundred years old. In these days there is no more talk about Sin--at least, outside certain circles. There are habits, it is true, which harm an artist's eye and destroy his hand. We say that it is a pity when an artist falls into these habits. We call it a pity, Armorel, not the way of Sin. A pity--that is all. It means the same thing, I dare say, so far as the artist is concerned.' CHAPTER IX THE LAST DAY BUT ONE The last day but one! It always comes at length--it is bound to come--the saddest, the most sentimental of all days. The boy who leaves school--I speak of the old-fashioned boy and the ancient school--where he has been fagged and bullied and flogged, on this last day but one looks round with a choking throat upon the dingy walls and the battered desks. Even the convict who is about to be released after years of prison feels a sentimental melancholy in gazing for the last time upon the whitewashed walls. The world, which misunderstands the power of temptation and is distrustful as to the reality of repentance, will probably prove cold to him. How much more, then, when one looks around on the last day but one of a holiday! To-morrow we part. This is the last day of companionship.