He was half laughing, but the flushed face that she turned towards him was altogether earnest.
“Don’t think me arrogant, Val, but I do so wish I could make you see it as I do. Don’t you see that the Christian ideal of self-sacrifice was only the swing of the pendulum, from the brutal old days when men rejoiced in seeing their fellow-creatures tortured and killed? Feelings had to be developed, and so the Sermon on the Mount was preached. The pendulum has swung too far the other way now—charity has come to mean self-advertisement or sentimentality.”
Quentillian, deeply interested in his own exposition of views that were by no means new to him, was brought up short by a call from behind him.
“Hi, Owen! Are you walking for a wager? I want to ask you something.”
Quentillian, not at all disposed to welcome Adrian and his interrogations, was obliged to slacken his steps as Valeria did hers.
Adrian was swishing at the long grasses on either side of the road with a slender length of ash.
“Look here, old man, have you got anybody in your eye for that living?”
Adrian’s head was studiously turned towards his depredations with the ash-stick.
“Because if you haven’t—not that it matters to me, particularly, you understand, but I’ve got a friend, who might be the man you want.”
“Who is he?”