"What is your desire, sick-minded man?" the saint interrogated him, "what consummation would exalt your languid eyes?"
"I want the present not to be. It is neither grave nor noble."
"Then that is your sickness. That mere negation is at once your hope and end."
"I do not know."
"If the present so derides the dignified past surely your desire lies in a future incarnating beautiful old historic dreams?"
"I do not know."
"Ideals are not in the past. They do not exist in any future. They rush on, and away, beyond your immediate activities, beyond the horizons that are for ever fixed, forever charging down upon us."
"I do not know."
"What is it you do know?" asked the exasperated Saint, jerking his fountain pen to loosen its flow, and Masterman replied like a lunatic: