As Hazlet was out when he called, Julian wrote on his card, “Dear H, will you come to tea at 8? Yours ever, J Home.”
At 8 o’clock accordingly Hazlet was seated, as he had not been for a very long time, by Julian’s fireside. Julian’s conversation interested him, and he could not help feeling a little humbled at the unworthiness which prevented him from more frequently enjoying it. It was not till after tea, when they had pulled their chairs to the fire, that Julian said, “Hazlet, I was sorry to see you in bad company last night.”
“Me!” said Hazlet, feigning surprise.
“You!”
Hazlet saw that all attempt at concealment was useless. “For God’s sake, don’t tell my mother, or any of the Ildown people,” he said, turning pale.
“Is it likely I should? Yet my doing so would be the very least harm that could happen to you, Hazlet, if you adopt these courses. I had rather see you afraid of the sin than of the detection.”
Hazlet stammered out in self-defence one of those commonplaces which he had heard but too often in the society of those who “put evil for good and good for evil.”
Julian very quietly tore the miserable sophism to shreds, and said, “There is but one way to describe these vices, Hazlet,—they are deadly, bitter, ruinous.”
“Oh, they are very common. Lots of men—”
“Tush!” said Julian; “their commonness, if indeed it be so, does not diminish their deadliness. Not to put the question on the religious ground at all, I fully agree with Carlyle that, on the mere consideration of expedience and physical fact, nothing can be more fatal, more calamitous than ‘to burn away in mad waste the divine aromas and celestial elements from our existence; to change our holy of holies into a place of riot; to make the soul itself hard, impious, barren.’”