’I shall never forget the walk we ’ve had.  I have to thank you for the noblest of pleasures.  You ’ve taught me—­well, a thousand things; the things money can’t buy.  What mornings they were!  And the dead-tired nights!  Under the rock and up to see the snowy peak pink in a gap of thick mist.  You were right:  it made a crimsoning colour shine like a new idea.  Up in those mountains one walks with the divinities, you said.  It’s perfectly true.  I shall remember I did.  I have a treasure for life!  Now I understand where you get your ideas.  The life we lead down there is hoggish.  You have chosen the right.  You’re right, over and over again, when you say, the dirty sweaters are nearer the angels for cleanliness than my Lord and Lady Sybarite out of a bath, in chemical scents.  A man who thinks, loathes their High Society.  I went through Juvenal at college.  But you—­to be sure, you add example—­make me feel the contempt of it more.  I am everlastingly indebted to you.  Yes, I won’t forget:  you preach against the despising of anything.

This was pleasant in Woodseer’s ears, inasmuch as it established the young nobleman as the pupil of his philosophy for the conduct of life; and to fortify him, he replied: 

’Set your mind on the beauty, and there’ll be no room for comparisons.  Most of them are unjust, precious few instructive.  In this case, they spoil both pictures:  and that scene down there rather hooks me; though I prefer the Dachstein in the wane of the afterglow.  You called it Carinthia.’

‘I did:  the beautiful Gorgon, haggard Venus—­if she is to be a girl!’ Fleetwood rejoined.  ‘She looked burnt out—­a spectre.’

‘One of the admirably damned,’ said Woodseer, and he murmured with enjoyment:  ’Between the lights—­that ’s the beauty and the tragedy of Purgatory!’

His comrade fell in with the pictured idea:  ’You hit it:—­not what you called the “sublimely milky,” and not squalid as you’ll see the faces of the gambling women at the tables below.  Oblige me—­may I beg?—­don’t clap names on the mountains we’ve seen.  It stamps guide-book on them, English tourist, horrors.  We’ll moralize over the crowds at the tables down there.  On the whole, it’s a fairish game:  you know the odds against you, as you don’t on the Turf or the Bourse.  Have your fling; but don’t get bitten.  There’s a virus.  I’m not open to it.  Others are.’

Hereupon Woodseer, wishing to have his individuality recognised in the universality it consented to, remarked on an exchequer that could not afford to lose, and a disposition free of the craving to win.

These were, no doubt, good reasons for abstaining, and they were grand morality.  They were, at the same time, customary phrases of the unfleshed in folly.  They struck Fleetwood with a curious reminder of the puking inexperienced, whom he had seen subsequently plunge suicidally.  He had a sharp vision of the attractive forces of the game; and his elemental nature exulted in siding with the stronger against a pretender to the superhuman.  For Woodseer had spoken a trifle loftily, as quite above temptation.  To see a forewarned philosopher lured to try the swim on those tides, pulled along the current, and caught by the undertug of the lasher, would be fun.