"How dreadfully sad!" murmured Alice. She was thinking that after all Isabel was not nearly as good-looking as she was, and that most men consider beauty far more important than brains in a woman.
"It is cruel work, Alice, when one's duty and one's affections clash! I sometimes wonder if my duty to my father is not more binding than my duty to my own conscience; yet if I acted as I thought wrongly, in order not to vex my father, I fancy such a course would be the doing of evil that good might come."
Alice sighed. "I expect it would." She was wishing she had been clever instead of pretty; it seemed to pay better in the long run after all.
Edgar went on: "I cannot help feeling that political life in a measure blunts one's finer perceptions and lowers one's ideals. Of course I see, with my father, that from the party point of view a certain amount of unanimity is imperative; but from the personal point of view I cannot see that a man is justified in sacrificing his own principles—and the expression of them—to any consideration whatever."
"Of course not," said Alice. She was wondering if Paul talked to Isabel about political and personal points of view, and if Isabel had any idea what it all meant.
"You see, Alice, the Sermon on the Mount is as binding now as it was eighteen centuries ago; yet who now gives his cloak to them that take his coat; or who strives to be meek and merciful and poor in spirit?"
Alice looked at Edgar. He was a handsomer man than Paul and much more religious; she wondered she did not like him as well.
"It is very difficult for me to talk about the things I really care for," he continued, his eyes bright with excitement. "I never do it to anybody except you, but you are different from everybody else. I cannot reconcile to my conscience the present attitude of the rich towards the poor—that is what troubles me so much."
"Does it? I am so sorry," said Alice gently. She was grieved for Edgar to be unhappy, but she wondered that he let a trifle such as this make him so.
"Yes; I cannot get it out of my mind. When the charge is brought against us, 'I was a stranger and ye took Me not in,' do you think it will be enough to answer: 'Lord, there were the workhouses and the poor rates; and indiscriminate charity was supposed to pauperize the lower classes'?"