Page:Hichens - The Green Carnation.djvu/27

Rh say as much? Mr. Amarinth is quite right. He declares that goodness is merely another name for cowardice, and that we all have a certain disease of tendencies that inclines us to certain things labelled sins. If we check our tendencies, we drive the disease inwards; but if we sin, we throw it off. Suppressed measles are far more dangerous than measles that come out."

"I see; we are to aim at inducing a violent rash that all the world may stare at."

Her cousin glanced at her for a moment with a tinge of uneasy inquiry. She was not very sharp, although she was very receptive of modern philosophy.

"Well," she said, a little doubtfully, "not quite that, I suppose."

"We are to sin on the house-top and in the street, instead of in the privacy of a room with the door locked. But what will the London County Council say?"

"Oh, they have nothing to do with our class. They only concern themselves with acrobats, and respectable elderly women who are fired from cannons. That is so right. Respectable elderly women do so much harm. Mr. Amarinth said to-night—in the garden scene, if you remember—that prolonged purity wrinkled the mind as much as prolonged impurity wrinkled