“Your pleasure then will be a double one,” she said, “the pleasure of creating something and that of doing good as well. Mr. Brand must have that double pleasure, too, when he feels all his faculties at work and knows that he is creating something that is beautiful, as you will feel that you are doing something good.”
His face darkened and his eyes flashed at the sound of Brand’s name. She felt that he stiffened, mind and body, into hostility.
“Pardon me,” he said curtly, “if I am not pleased with the comparison. I consider Felix Brand, his ideas and principles and his mode of life, to be so thoroughly detestable that even the mention of his name rouses my contempt and disgust. I consider him,” Gordon went on, his tones lower and more tense, “a plague spot, a source of evil that would be a menace to any community.”
“Oh, Mr. Gordon!” she protested. “Aren’t you exaggerating dreadfully? Aren’t you prejudiced against him? Think of the beautiful buildings he creates and of the elevating and refining influence of such noble and beautiful architecture!”
“I know,” he assented, “the man has genius, great genius. He has proved that already, and he might have gone farther in his line and done much finer and greater things, if he had lived a different life. But he is bringing his fate upon himself.” He paused for an instant, and she, wondering what he meant by that last dark sentence, which he had spoken in a tone of the most serious significance, was about to ask him for an explanation when he turned upon her abruptly.
“Tell me,” he demanded, “do you think that a man is to be pardoned for being a source of evil, for leading or forcing others into wrong-doing and misfortune, while he keeps himself prosperous and honored, just because he can create beautiful things in art, or architecture, or music, or literature? Is the world in greater need of being made more beautiful and more pleasurable for the few than it is of being made better for the many? Would you condone a man for deliberately making it worse because he was adding to its beauty?”
Gordon’s intent gaze and the solemn, eager earnestness with which he spoke appalled his listener ever so little. It was as if he were asking these questions from his inmost, deepest heart.
“I—I don’t know just what to say,” she faltered. “I never thought of the matter in that way before. One doesn’t like to answer so serious a question offhand. But—” she hesitated and felt herself being swept into agreement by his very forcefulness of character and intensity of feeling. “Why, yes—I suppose you are right. If the world were entirely wicked it would be a failure, no matter how beautiful it might be.”
“I was sure you would agree with me,” he responded with a look of pleased satisfaction. “But now I want you to tell me something else,” he pursued in a gentler tone and with a humbler, softer manner. “I want to suppose the case of two possible men and I want you to tell me which of the two you think would be the more deserving of life.”