"Modern times?" said Vivian. "I have heard of a commandment——"
"Good Heavens!" said Percival, throwing back his handsome head, "Vivian is going to be didactic! I think this conversation has lasted quite long enough. Elizabeth, consider yourself worsted in the argument, and contest the point no longer."
"There has been no argument," said Elizabeth. "There has been assertion on your part, and indignation on ours; that is all."
"Then am I to consider myself worsted?" asked Percival. But he got no answer. Presently, however, he burst out with renewed vigour.
"Right and wrong! What does it mean? I hate the very sound of the words. What is right to me is wrong to you, and vice versa. It's all a matter of convention. 'Now, who shall arbitrate? as Browning says—
'Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match me; we all surmise,
They, this thing, and I, that; whom shall my soul believe?"
The lines rang out boldly upon the listeners' ears. Percival was one of the few men who can venture to recite poetry without making themselves ridiculous. He continued hotly—
"There is neither truth nor falsehood in the world, and those who aver that there is are either impostors or dupes."
"Ah," said Vivian, "you remind me of Bacon's celebrated sentence—'Many there be that say with jesting Pilate, What is truth? but do not wait for an answer.'"
"I think you have both quoted quite enough," said Kitty, lightly. "You forget how little I understand of these deep subjects. I don't know how it is, but Percival always says the things most calculated to annoy people; he never visits papa's studio without abusing modern art, or meets a doctor without sneering at the medical profession, or loses an opportunity of telling Elizabeth, who loves truth for its own sake, that he enjoys trickery and falsehood, and thinks it clever to tell lies."