“You 're absolutely wrong,” said Herold. “There are vast possibilities in Unity.” “Not one,” said John. “Are you trying the right way? Do you remember what the old don said when he came across two undergraduates vainly persuading the college tortoise to eat lettuce: 'Gentlemen, are you quite sure you are trying at the right end?' ” “What do you mean?” “Can't you try by the way of the heart?” John flared up. “You 're talking rot. The child has n't had a harsh word since she has been here. I'm not honey-tongued as a rule, but to her I've been a female saint with a lily in my hand. And my aunt, with all her maddening ways, would not hurt the feelings of a black beetle.” “Quite so,” said Herold. “But all that's negative. Why can't you try something positive? Give Unity love, and you 'll be astonished at the result.” “Love,” said John, impatiently. “You 're a sentimentalist.” This time Herold flared up. “If I am,” he cried, “I thank the good God who made me. This affectation of despising sentiment, this cant that a lot of you writing fellows talk, makes me sick. If a bowelless devil makes a photograph of a leprous crew in a thieves' kitchen, you say: 'Ha! Ha! Here 's the real thing. There 's no foolish sentiment here. This is LIFE!' Ugh! Of all the rotten poses of the superior young ass, this is the rottenest. Everything noble, beautiful, and splendid that has ever been written, sung, painted, or done since the world began, has been born in sentiment, has been carried through by sentiment, has been remembered and reverenced by sentiment. I hate to hear an honest man like you sneering at sentiment. You yourself took on this job through sentiment. And now when I tell you in a few simple words, 'Love that child whose destiny you 've made yourself responsible for,' you pooh-pooh the staring common sense of the proposition and call me a sentimentalist--by which you mean an infernal fool.” John, who had bent heavy brows upon him during this harangue, took his pipe from his mouth. “It's you who are feeding the tortoise at the wrong end,” he said unhumorously. “This is not a matter of sentiment, but of duty. I do my best to be good to the child. I 'll do the utmost I can to make reparation for what she has suffered. But as for loving her--I suppose you know what love means? As for loving this poor little slut, with her arrested development and with the torture the sight of her means to me, why, my good man, you 're talking monkey gibberish!” Herold lit a cigarette with nervous fingers. The animation in his thin, sensitive face had not yet died away. “I'm not talking gibberish,” he replied; “I'm talking sense.” “Pooh!”--or something like it--said John.