‘You couldn’t expect me to tell; I’m a diplomatist.’ ‘I have an idea that it is not very much connected with diplomacy.’ ‘In which case it would be poor diplomacy for me to give it away.’ ‘Mr. Sybert, you give a person a queer impression, as if you were acting a part all the time, and didn’t want people to know what you were really like.’ ‘An anarchist must be careful; the police——’ ‘I believe you are one!’ she cried. ‘Don’t be alarmed. I assure you I am not. But,’ he added, with a little flash of fire, ‘I swear, in a country like this, one would like to be—anything for action! Oh, I’m not a fool,’ he added, in response to her smile. ‘We’re living in the nineteenth century, and not in the thirteenth. Anarchy belongs to the dark ages as much as feudalism.’ ‘You’re so difficult to place! I like to know whether people are Democrats or Republicans, and whether they are Presbyterians or Episcopalians. Then one always knows where to find them, and is not in danger of hurting their feelings.’ ‘I’m afraid I can’t claim any such respectable connexions as those,’ Sybert laughed. ‘Half the time one would think you were a Catholic by the way you stand up for the priests; the other half one would think you weren’t anything by the way you abuse them.’ ‘This mania for classifying! What difference if a person calls himself a Catholic or a Baptist, a Unitarian or a Buddhist? It’s all one. A man is not necessarily irreligious because he doesn’t subscribe to any cut-and-dried formulae.’ ‘Mr. Sybert,’ she dared, ‘I used to be terribly suspicious of you. I knew you weren’t just the way you appeared, and I thought you were really rather bad; but I’m beginning to believe you’re unusually good.’ ‘Oh, I say, Miss Marcia! What are you trying to get at? Do you want me to confess to a hair shirt underneath my dinner-jacket?—I am afraid you must leave that to our friend the monk, up on his mountain-top.’ ‘No, I didn’t mean just that. Flagellations and hair shirts strike me as a pretty useless sort of goodness.’ ‘It does seem a poor business,’ he agreed, ‘for a strong young fellow like that to give up his whole life to the work of getting his soul into paradise.’ ‘Still, if he wants paradise that much, and is willing to make the sacrifice——’ ‘It’s setting a pretty high value on his own soul. I should never rate mine as being worth a lifetime of effort.’ ‘I suppose a person’s soul is worth whatever price he chooses to set.’ ‘Oh, of course, if a man keeps his soul in a bandbox he can produce it immaculate in the end; but what’s a soul for if it’s not for use? He would much better live in the world with his fellow-men, and help them keep their souls clean, even at the risk of getting his own a little dusty.’ ‘Yes, perhaps that’s true,’ she conceded. ‘Such dust will doubtless brush off in the end.’ ‘It certainly ought, if things are managed right.’