He was also, not quite unconsciously, gaining something better than gold. He was seeing all the deformity of selfishness, and the unloveliness of that wit whose chief power is to wound. In asking the bitter questions, What is this woman living for? what good does her life do the world? echo had repeated the same questions in his own soul--What are you living for? what good does the world derive from 19 your being in it? What in him and in others had been vices or faults, veiled with a certain decorum so as to look almost like virtues, in this woman’s character were stripped of the veil, and showed in all their native hatefulness. Here, too, were free-thinking and atheism _au naturel_, without the crown on their brows, the lustre he had fancied their faces radiated, and without their airy grace. He saw a scoffer, and it was as though he saw a devil. He had not the consolation of thinking her really worse than himself, for he could not shut his eyes to the fact that the difference between them had been in manner, not in essence. He had shown more good taste and delicacy, that was all. “After all,” he thought, as he sat there that day, looking out the window, “however it may be with men, women need religion. I would not trust a woman without it. I will not retract my saying that religion is a strait-jacket, and intended only for those who cannot stand straight without it, but I begin to think that we are all of us partial lunatics.” “I have heard say that parlor means a place to parle in,” remarked Miss Clinton presently. “The orioles are building in this tree,” Carl said, quite as though nothing unpleasant had happened. She tossed her head. What did she care about orioles? “How blood will show, both good blood and bad,” she said with the air of one who has just discovered a great truth. “Wealth, associates, travel, occupations, education, neither will efface the signature. The original stamp remains in spite of circumstances.” At the beginning, Carl scented battle, but he assumed an air of great cheerfulness. “You are quite right,” he said. “That great _parvenu_, Adam, and that still more frightfully new person, his wife, have left an indelible stain upon their progeny. We can see it to this day, faintly in some, more strongly marked in others. And, on the other hand, that prince of the _ancien régime_, Lucifer--” “Nonsense!” interrupted Miss Clinton. “I was going to say, if you can stop your most disagreeable and disrespectful mocking--I was going to say that you have some of the Bohemian lounging ways of your father, though you never saw him, and though you have been under the training of Charles Yorke since your babyhood.”