“To try to find out?” his father echoed compassionately. “It’s not necessary to try very hard. Goodness is what makes the world better.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” his son nervously interposed; “but the question is, what is good—”
Mr. Spence, with a darkening brow, brought his fist down emphatically on the damask. “I’ll thank you not to blaspheme, my son!”
Draper’s head reared itself a trifle higher on his thin neck. “I was not going to blaspheme; only there may be different ways—”
“There’s where you’re mistaken, Draper. There’s only one way: there’s my way,” said Mr. Spence in a tone of unshaken conviction.
“I know, father; I see what you mean. But don’t you see that even your way wouldn’t be the right way for you if you ceased to believe that it was?”
His father looked at him with mingled bewilderment and reprobation. “Do you mean to say that the fact of goodness depends on my conception of it, and not on God Almighty’s?”
“I do ... yes ... in a specific sense ...” young Draper falteringly maintained; and Mr. Spence turned with a discouraged gesture toward his secretary’s suspended pen.
“I don’t understand your scientific jargon, Draper; and I don’t want to.—What’s the next point, Millner? (No; no savarin. Bring the fruit—and the coffee with it.)”
Millner, keenly aware that an aromatic savarin au rhum was describing an arc behind his head previous to being rushed back to the pantry under young Draper’s indifferent eye, stiffened himself against this last assault of the enemy, and read out firmly: “ What relation do you consider that a man’s business conduct should bear to his religious and domestic life?”