Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/218

Rh world, that trash of superstition, that fit of spuríous repentance, that ague-attack of poltroonery which men, because they are ashamed of it, dignify into conscience or creed! He would sell his soul to the devil if there were such a thing as a devil, and yet he prides himself on clinging to an idea which he has never followed except for the sake of adventure and self-interest, and to a cause which he has never embraced except as a vent for his own listlessness and discontent! And men call that king of straw, that random folly, that weakness cloaked in borrowed purples, honour!"

But the ironies that he wove to himself, the contempt in which he strove to steep and still the pangs of shame that Conrad Phaulcon's single virtue had awakened, had little potency. He was a gentleman, and the disgrace of his sin was as gall to him. Something of that humiliation and unendurable hatred for his own act which made Iscariot slay himself, finding no value in the silver pieces for whose glitter he had wrecked his peace and sold the guiltless, smote even through the ice-mail of his graceful callousness, the steel cuirass of his worldly policies.

And—though cowardice had no place in him, as it had in the fiery but mobile temper of Phaulcon—a shiver ran through him as he thought of those