"But duty!" she interposed, rather timidly, as he paused.
She was confused by his persistent ignoring of all the standards by
which she was accustomed to judge, and she threw out the question as
one in desperation brings forward a last argument, half foreseeing that
it will be useless.
"Duty!" he echoed, fiercely. "Life is an outrage, and what duty can
take precedence of righting it as far as we can. That old fool of a
Ruskin--I beg your pardon, Miss Wainwright, if you're fond of him--did
manage to say a sensible thing when he told a boarding-school full of
girls that their first duty was to want to dance. To allow that there
is any duty above making the best of life is a species of moral
suicide."
She looked at him with an expression of profoundest feeling. She was
too little used to arguments of this sort to discern that the whole
matter was involved in the definition one gave to the phrase "The best
of life," and that to assume that this meant mere selfish or sensuous
enjoyment, was to beg the whole question. She was carried away by the
dramatic fashion in which he ended, dashing down his palette and
throwing himself into a chair.
"There!" he exclaimed, with an air of whimsical impatience. "Now I've
got so excited that I can't paint! That's what comes of having
convictions." The struggle was over. He brushed all doubts and
questions aside.
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