It isn't respectable for the town not to
have statues, of course."
Mr. Staggchase moved toward the door.
"Well," he said, "I don't know who's in the fight, but I'll bet on your
side. Good night. I hope virtue will be its own reward."
"Oh, it always is," retorted his wife. "I especially make it a point
that it shall be."
XIX
HOW CHANCES MOCK.
II Henry IV.; iii.--I.
A man often creates his own strongest temptations by dwelling upon
possibilities of evil; and it is equally true that nothing else renders
a man so likely to break moral laws as the consciousness of having
broken them already. The experience of Arthur Fenton was in these days
affording a melancholy illustration of both of these propositions. The
humiliating inner consciousness of having violated all the principles
of honor of his fealty to which he had been secretly proud begot in him
an unreasonable and unreasoning impulse still further to transgress.
When arraigned by his inner self for his betrayal of Hubbard, it was
his instinct to defend himself by showing his superiority to all moral
canons whatever. He felt a certain desperate inclination to trample all
principles underfoot, as if by so doing he could destroy the standards
by which he was being tried.
Fenton was not of a mental fibre sufficiently robust to make this
impulse likely to result in any violent outbreak, and, indeed, but for
circumstances it would doubtless have vapored itself away in words and
vagrant fancies.
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