“But you must always remember also,” said Grant to me, in his heavy abstracted way, when I had urged this view, “that the very vileness of the life of these ordered plebeian places bears witness to the victory of the human soul. I agree with you. I agree that they have to live in something worse than barbarism. They have to live in a fourth-rate civilization. But yet I am practically certain that the majority of people here are good people. And being good is an adventure far more violent and daring than sailing round the world. Besides—”
“Go on,” I said.
No answer came.
“Go on,” I said, looking up.
The big blue eyes of Basil Grant were standing out of his head and he was paying no attention to me. He was staring over the side of the tram.
“What is the matter?” I asked, peering over also.
“It is very odd,” said Grant at last, grimly, “that I should have been caught out like this at the very moment of my optimism. I said all these people were good, and there is the wickedest man in England.”
“Where?” I asked, leaning over further, “where?”
“Oh, I was right enough,” he went on, in that strange continuous and sleepy tone which always angered his hearers at acute moments, “I was right enough when I said all these people were good. They are heroes; they are saints. Now and then they may perhaps steal a spoon or two; they may beat a wife or two with the poker. But they are saints all the same; they are angels; they are robed in white; they are clad with wings and haloes—at any rate compared to that man.”
“Which man?” I cried again, and then my eye caught the figure at which Basil's bull's eyes were glaring.