‘Yes, that is a very fine idea,’ said Gilbert, with ready benevolence—‘that theory of overcoming evil with good. The thing is, how far is it practicable? You speak as a woman, and a good woman. I see as a man, and a man of the world. And speaking from my knowledge of men in general, and of your brother Otho in particular, I should say Miss Wynter would make him a far more suitable wife than the best of women, filled with high aspirations and noble aims. Magdalen Wynter understands him by reason of being composed of a similar clay. Understanding him, she will lead him—at least, very often. A saint would simply exasperate him into something ten times worse than he is. You do not know the ease, the comfort, and the help it is to be understood; how it can keep a wavering man in the right, and drag a sinning man out of the wrong. Good people don’t need half as much understanding as bad ones, and with due respect to you and to current notions on the subject, saints and people who never do wrong are not those who are the most sympathetic and comprehending. It sounds very degrading, I daresay, but it is true—true as anything can be.’ Gilbert spoke with much more emphasis than usual, and with a shade of bitterness in his tone. Had Roger Camm been there, he would have understood it in a moment; it would have confirmed some vague suspicions long entertained by him. But to Eleanor, it seemed as if Gilbert were composing an apology for wrong-doing; making it out as being rather meritorious than otherwise. With emphasis equal to his own, and with some bitterness in her tone also, she replied— ‘I daresay you may be right. Men of the world usually are right, on the outside, at any rate; but I look inside, and it seems to me that all this is very sad and dreadful, too. Life is full of these horrible contradictions, and it appears as if you can never have any good or beautiful thing without, as it were, a heap of dust and ashes beside it, spoiling it all.’ Gilbert laughed a little, and she felt chilled—not vexed with him—as she was conscious she ought to have been, but discouraged by the fact that he was about to differ from her. ‘Why, of course,’ he admitted. ‘Is it not in the very nature of life, as we know life, that it should be so? What are the good and beautiful things, as you call them, except sacrifices and aspirations or struggles after something higher and better than our everyday fight and grind? And how can you have beautiful sacrifices without something bad and mean to call them out? and how can you aspire after the better, without a worse which makes the better desirable to you? But for the dustheaps, I do not really see how the shrines and temples would ever get their due share of admiration.’