"There--dancing with the Prince. Come, old man, don't look so grave. She is as good as the best of them, and better than most. Do I not know them?--these smug matrons and affected damsels, who present themselves to you as though they had been brought up on virtue and water, and who are as free from taint of wickedness as Diana was when she popped upon Endymion unaware. Chaste Diana! What a parody! Pretty creatures, Fred, these modern ones--but sly, sir, devilish sly! Do I not know them, with their airs and affectations and false assumptions of superior virtue? That is it--assume it if you have it not--which I always thought dishonest, unmanly advice on Hamlet's part. But now and then--very rarely, old man!--comes a nineteenth century Diogenes, in white tie and swallow-tail, who holds a magic mirror to pretended modesty's face, and sees beneath. What is the use of living, if one has not the courage of his opinions? And I have mine, and will stand by them--to the death! So I tell you again, Fred, there is no lady in these rooms of whom she is not the equal. If you want to understand what life really is, old man, you must get behind the scenes." "Can one man set the world right?" I asked. "He can do a man's work towards it, and if he shirk it when it presents itself, let him rot in the gutter." I drew him from the room, for he was excited, and was attracting attention. When we were alone, I said, "Sydney, what impelled you to introduce a lady into this assembly under a false name?" "A woman's curiosity," he replied, "and a man's promise. It had to be done, the promise being given. Fred, I exact no pledge from you. We speak as man to man, and I know you are not likely to fall away from me. I hate the soft current in which fashion lolls, and simpers, and lies--it palls upon the taste, and I do not intend to become its slave. I choose the more dangerous haven--sweetly dangerous, Fred--in which honesty and innocence (allied, of course, with natural human desires and promptings) find some sort of resting-place. It is a rocky haven, you say, and timid feet are bleeding there; but the bold can tread the path with safety. If you could see what underlies the mask of mock modesty, as from a distance it views its higher nature, you would see a yearning to share in the danger and the pleasure which honest daring ensures." It is not in my power to recall the exact words spoken by Sydney Campbell at this and subsequent conversations; all I can do is to endeavour to convey to you an idea of the kind of man he was, so that you may the better comprehend what kind of a woman she was who held him in her toils. Sydney continued: