He rose to his feet and began slowly to collect his belongings.  Then their eyes met, and she burst out laughing—­he too smiled.

“You are very ingenious, Lord Arranmore,” she said.

“It is my conscience,” he assured her.  “It is out of gear to the tune of three thousand.”

“I don’t believe in the conscience,” she answered.  ’This is sheer obstinacy.  You have made up your mind that I should be interested in that money somehow, and you can’t bear to suffer defeat.”

“I am an old man,” he said, “and you are a young woman.  Let us leave it where it is for a while.  I have an idea of the sort of life which you are planning for yourself.  Believe me, that before you have lived here for many months you will be willing to give years of your life, years of your labour and your youth, to throw yourself into a struggle which without money is hopeless.  Remember that there was a time when I too was young.  I too saw these things as you and Brooks see them to-day.  I do not wish to preach pessimism to you.  I fought and was worsted.  So will you be.  The whole thing is a vast chimera, a jest of the God you have made for yourself.  But as long as the world lasts the young will have to buy knowledge—­as I have bought it.  Don’t go into the fray empty-handed—­it will only prolong the suffering.”

“You speak,” she protested, gently, “as though it were impossible to do good.”

“It is absolutely and entirely impossible to do good by any means which you and Brooks and the whole army of your fellow-philanthropists have yet evoked,” he answered, with a sudden fierce note in his tone.  “Don’t think that I speak to you as a cynic, one who loiters on the edge of the cauldron and peers in to gratify cravings for sensation.  I have been there, down in the thick of it, there where the mud is as black as hell—­bottomless as eternity.  I was young—­as you—­mad with enthusiasm.  I had faith, strength, belief.  I meant to cleanse the world.  I worked till the skin hung on my bones.  I gave all that I had—­youth—­gifts—­money.  And, do you know what I was doing?  I was swimming against the tide of natural law, stronger than all mankind, unconquerable, eternal.  There wasn’t the smallest corner of the world the better for my broken life.  There wasn’t a child, a man, or a woman content to grasp my hand and climb out.  There were plenty who mocked me.  But they fell back again.  They fell back always.”

“Oh, but you can’t tell that,” she cried.  “You can’t be sure.”

“You can be as sure of it as of life itself,” he answered.  “Come, take my advice.  I know.  I can save you a broken youth—­a broken heart.  Keep away from there.”

He pointed out of the window eastwards.

“You can be charitable like the others, subscribe to societies, visit the sick, read the Bible, play at it as long as you like—­but keep away from the real thing.  If you feel the fever in your veins—­fly.  Go abroad, study art, literature, music—­anything.  Only don’t listen to that cry.  It will draw you against your will even.  But not you nor the whole world of women, or the world full of gold, will ever stop it.  It is the everlasting legacy to the world of outraged nature.”