"I believe that idea is the basis of our minor social and domestic codes. Even when they're illogical in particular cases, they're necessary in general."
Evelyn looked across at Vane, as if to invite his opinion, and he knit his brows.
"I don't think Carroll's correct. The traditional view, which, as I understand it, is that the sense of right is innate, ingrained in man's nature, seems more reasonable. I'll give you two instances. There was a man in charge of a little mine. He had had the crudest education, and no moral training, but he was an excellent miner. Well, he was given a hint that it was not desirable the mine should turn out much paying ore."
"But why wasn't it required to produce as much as possible?"
Evelyn asked.
"I believe that somebody wanted to break down the value of the shares and afterward quietly buy them up. Anyway, though he knew it would result in his dismissal, the man I mentioned drove the boys his hardest. He worked savagely, taking risks he could have avoided by spending a little more time in precautions, in a badly timbered tunnel. He didn't reason—he was hardly capable of it—but he got the most out of the mine."
"It was fine of him!" Evelyn exclaimed.
"The engineer of a collier figures in the next case." Vane went on. "The engines were clumsy and badly finished, but the man spent his care and labor on them until I think he loved them. His only trouble was that he was sent to sea with second-rate oils and stores. After a while they grew so bad that he could hardly use them; and he had reasons for believing that a person who could dismiss or promote him was getting a big commission on the goods. He was a plain, unreasoning man; but he would not cripple his engines; and at last he condemned the stores and made the skipper purchase supplies he could use, at double the usual prices, in a foreign port. There could be only one result; he was driving a pump in a mine when I last met him."
He paused, and added quietly:
"It wasn't logic, it wasn't even conventional morality, that impelled these men. It was something that was part of them. What's more, men of their type are more common than the cynics believe."
Carroll smiled good-humoredly; and when the party sauntered toward the house, he walked beside Evelyn.