“You do not know the great university to which I have the honor to belong if you think intellectual dishonesty is tolerated among us. The moment we become intellectually dishonest we have done forever with Alma Mater. She sends us down immediately, and there is nothing for us then but the river or the Great Trades’ Union.” “That is what the world would call being ‘sent up.’ Yet if the simplest terms were not subject to totally different meanings in the varying strata of our society, we should not have so many of these pretty paradoxes to subsist upon. But I feel, Diomeda, that I am entitled to ask you one question. Was it in my capacity as a mentally dishonest person that you came to me to-night to ask me to arrange for you to be ‘sent down’ from your university?” “Answer that question to your own liking, beloved one. It was your appeal on my behalf that brought me here to-night. Would you have me ask whether you were mentally honest when you made it?” Her laugh had an edge that cut him like a keen blade. But she was quick to read the sharp thrill of pain that made his eyes grow dark. “Do not repine, my beloved Achilles,” she said with a softness that had the power to caress, “I found you after all to be as honest as I am myself.” “At least,” said the young man, sensible that even her lightest caresses possessed the ferocity of those of the snake and the tiger, “you are the first of your sex with whom I have conversed who appears to understand the uses of paradox.” “There is no other means by which the honest mind can carry on its thinking.” “If that is the case, you conduct the thinker to his doom with atrocious certainty. You conduct him to the gutter.” “That is true, O Achilles,” said the woman with a quiet laugh. “In other words,” pursued Northcote, “he demonstrates in his own person the impossibility of a reconciliation in any terms whatever between the ideal world of the spirit and the material world of the flesh.” “Why trouble to put it into so many words, dear lad? Briefly, I am the child of the poor drunken man of genius, my father; and I suspect that you had a poor drunken man of genius for your father also.” “I would have you to know that my father was ordained a clergyman of the Church of England.” “How old was he when he died?” “About thirty.” “Did it never occur to you that the poor fellow killed himself in the struggle to become an honest man?” “These eyes of yours are dreadfully piercing. I remember my mother saying of him that the clock of his intellect was always set a little too fast.” “She never informed you by any chance, dear lad, that if he had not taken an overdose of opium he would have died a lunatic?” “Or that he killed himself with drinking brandy after the manner of your own illustrious parent. By the way, you have yet to give me a description of your mother. Can you recall her?”