Luther Williams did not answer for a moment, then he said, "It isn't altogether the record, not altogether what a man has done, but what he knows he will do, that counts. What's done is done. It can't be helped. We can't always prevent a thing from happening once, but we can help it from happening a second time, if we are careful. If we make a misstep and discover that we're off the road, we must look sharp so as not to do it again. We must go around somehow, take another road, get away from the mud and the uncertain places, get our feet where there's no danger of slipping."
"Suppose we don't know the right road. Suppose the thing which offers the most honesty for ourselves is all wrong for some one else. What's to be done?"
"Sacrifice yourself," came Luther's quick response.
Kenneth was silent for awhile as he puffed away at his pipe. Then he said, "How far ought one to carry sacrifice? To the extinction of one's best self? To the suppression of all that makes life worth living?"
"Generally speaking, yes, I say. Life is worth living when you can feel the joy of having made a great sacrifice because it was the best thing for everybody. Though it depends, of course. If, unless you threw yourself into the breach, it meant disgrace to some one else. Yes."
"But if it meant simply the indulgence of a whim, the increase of another's luxuries, the catering to another's foolish pride and vanity, what then?"
"That might put another face on the matter. I'd probably say no to that. No one has a right to spoil his own life merely to indulge another in selfishness. It's a nice question, Mr. Hilary, and each must answer it according to his own conscience. I know my conscience, you know yours."
"And they rise up and confront us in the sternest manner in just such silent places."
"Sometimes it is the heart more than the conscience," said Mr. Williams, after a pause. "The heart's a pretty difficult thing to reason with. You think you have it completely under control, when first thing you know it's galloping off in a direction you never dreamed of."
Kenneth took his pipe from his mouth, knocked out the ashes, and slipped the pipe into his pocket. "One can't afford to have a heart unless he's a millionaire," he said, "not in these days."