The good die young because there
is no useful work for them to do. No really satisfactory person, from
a moral point of view, ever achieved greatness!"
She half closed her eyes.
"My head is going round," she murmured. "What an upheaval! Fancy
Mephistopheles on a steamer!"
"He was, at any rate, the most interesting of that little trio,"
Wingrave remarked, "but even he was a trifle heavy."
"Do you go about the world preaching your new doctrines?" she asked.
"Not I!" he answered. "Nothing would every make a missionary of me,
for good or for evil, for the simple reason that no one else's welfare
except my own has the slightest concern for me."
"What hideous selfishness!" she said softly. "But I don't think--you
quite mean it?"
"I can assure you I do," he answered drily. "My world consists of
myself for the central figure, and the half a dozen or so of people
who are useful or amusing to me! Except that the rest are needed to
keep moving the machinery of the world, they might all perish, so far
as I was concerned."
"I don't think," Mrs. Travers said softly, "that I should like to be
in your world."
"I can very easily believe you," he answered.
"Unless," she remarked tentatively, "I came to convert!"
He nodded.
"There is something in that," he admitted. "It would be a great work,
a little difficult, you know."
"All the more interesting!"
"You see," he continued, "I am not only bad, but I admire badness.
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