Geoffrey turned and looked at Sir Patrick, as if Sir Patrick had personally insulted him. “Who is this anonymous man, who finds his way to his own ends, and pities nobody and sticks at nothing?” he asked. “Give him a name!” “I am quoting an example,” said Sir Patrick. “I am not attacking a man.” “What right have you,” cried Geoffrey--utterly forgetful, in the strange exasperation that had seized on him, of the interest that he had in controlling himself before Sir Patrick--“what right have you to pick out an example of a rowing man who is an infernal scoundrel--when it’s quite as likely that a rowing man may be a good fellow: ay! and a better fellow, if you come to that, than ever stood in your shoes!” “If the one case is quite as likely to occur as the other (which I readily admit),” answered Sir Patrick, “I have surely a right to choose which case I please for illustration. (Wait, Mr. Delamayn! These are the last words I have to say and I mean to say them.) I have taken the example--not of a specially depraved man, as you erroneously suppose--but of an average man, with his average share of the mean, cruel, and dangerous qualities, which are part and parcel of unreformed human nature--as your religion tells you, and as you may see for yourself, if you choose to look at your untaught fellow-creatures any where. I suppose that man to be tried by a temptation to wickedness, out of the common; and I show, to the best of my ability, how completely the moral and mental neglect of himself, which the present material tone of public feeling in England has tacitly encouraged, leaves him at the mercy of all the worst instincts in his nature; and how surely, under those conditions, he _must_ go down (gentleman as he is) step by step--as the lowest vagabond in the streets goes down under _his_ special temptation--from the beginning in ignorance to the end in crime. If you deny my right to take such an example as that, in illustration of the views I advocate, you must either deny that a special temptation to wickedness can assail a man in the position of a gentleman, or you must assert that gentlemen who are naturally superior to all temptation are the only gentlemen who devote themselves to athletic pursuits. There is my defense. In stating my case, I have spoken out of my own sincere respect for the interests of virtue and of learning; out of my own sincere admiration for those young men among us who are resisting the contagion of barbarism about them. In _their_ future is the future hope of England. I have done.” Angrily ready with a violent personal reply, Geoffrey found himself checked, in his turn by another person with something to say, and with a resolution to say it at that particular moment.