“Exactly. New friends should have just as many fresh points of interest as, say, a picture-gallery. I love to watch new temperaments; they blaze and change like sunsets.” “You are quite right; but I hope this does not infer that you tire of your friends easily.” “Not of the residuum. The majority pass, of course. One would miss an immense amount of good comradeship if everything which cannot be lasting is to be avoided.” “You are not fickle?” “Not in the least. We all have our inner sanctuary, and consequently we have our esoteric and exoteric friendships, and the lookers-on make mistakes as to which is which.” “That is very true. There is nothing in which people are so much deceived about each other as in their emotions. Human nature is so much more many-sided than the world is willing to admit.” “You believe that the good are not as good as they would have us believe, nor the bad as bad?” “Exactly.” She was a woman worth talking to, and I roused myself. “It can be demonstrated. Goodness is largely a question of having aptitude for the latest conventions.” “Demonstrate,” she challenged, and then added: “Personally, I feel it, but have not the proof to hand.” I took up the challenge easily. “For instance, in ancient Sparta, thieving was a virtue and cowardice a crime. Nowadays, a coward may get along very well, but a thief would probably come to grief very soon. So it is with many other things.” “You think that a criminal may make a charming member of society, a good husband and father?” I winced. The conversation was extracting opinions from me which were just as well concealed, but I answered frankly: “I am sure of it.” “So am I.” I continued whimsically: “Don’t you think society would be much happier if, instead of these horrible punishments and immurings, people who had been convicted of a crime should be compelled to wear some outward sign that they were not to be trusted in that particular direction? It should be treated as a disease, not as a disgrace.” “A little difficult to enforce, eh?” “Not at all. We should all be up in arms if Brown came to lunch without the governmental mark that he was not to be trusted with forks and spoons, and without the least acrimony we should call in a policeman who would correct the matter.” “It might be carried still further, and people might be obliged to wear the evidence of their particular moral failing.” “Everybody would lie, and which do you think would be the most popular hypocrisy?” “In England, drink; because in the eyes of the average citizen of this country it would carry with it the least shame.” “Well said; but to my mind there is no vice which is not preferable, and yet people will shake a drunkard by the hand when they would shrink from a criminal of the emotions.” We both agreed that this was ridiculous. I had not been in the house an hour before I realised that she was a very charming woman, and that she was sincerely in love with Ughtred Gascoyne.