‘He can live for his family,’ she suggested.
‘Yes, if he has one. Otherwise he must live for an idea.’
She glanced at him sidewise. She would have liked to ask what idea he lived for, but it was a question she did not dare to put. Instead she commented: ‘It’s queer, isn’t it, how the ideas that men used to live for have passed away? Chivalry and crusading and going to war and living as hermits—I really don’t see what’s left.’
‘The most of the old ideals are exploded,’ he agreed. ‘But we have new ones to-day—sufficiently bad—to meet the needs of the present century. A man can make a god of his business, for instance.’
Marcia shifted her seat a trifle uneasily as she thought of her father, who certainly did make a god of his business. It may have struck Sybert that it was not a propitious subject, for he added almost instantly—
‘And there’s always art to fall back upon.’
‘But you don’t object to that,’ she remonstrated.
‘No, it’s good enough in its way,’ he agreed; ‘but it doesn’t go very deep.’
‘Artists would tell you then that it isn’t the true art.’
‘I dare say,’ he shrugged; ‘but at best there are a good many truer things.’