Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/88

 a very pleasant place for people who know how to live. We are the few. The rest are fools, and all we have to do to persuade the fools to permit us to live our own lives is to make them believe that we, too, are fools. It's so simple, once you understand. But what does the martyr gain? He has lost the suffrage of public opinion and he has done nothing to advance his own cause, for unless he has made the world believe in it he cannot carry it through. Bah! she repeated, I have no respect for martyrs. Give me an intelligent hypocrite every time!

What an extraordinary woman! thought Harold, and it occurred to him that he was learning more from her than he was from Paul. It was she who was giving him his first lessons in worldliness and he did not sense anything tangible in the manner of these lessons which he could resent. He found himself less aggressive, less inclined to obstinacy, chip more off shoulder, and back more flexible, than he had found himself with Drains. Paul seemed decent enough, he admitted, but he did not feel quite natural with Paul, quite ready to relax in his presence. With Campaspe, on the other hand, he already seemed acquainted; she awakened his sympathy. Part of this readier acceptance was doubtless due to his early environment. He knew women and trusted them. In spite of his college years, perhaps because of them, he never felt quite comfortable with men. . . . He was left to himself. The