"Very well," said Purvis, "I shall say nothing; but mind you, I do not believe in the business. It's wrong, it's not—well, it's not in good form. But there, it doesn't matter. It'll end in nothing."
"Exactly," said Leicester; but there was a strange light in his eyes. "And you, Sprague, you'll act straight, too?"
"Oh, certainly," said Sprague. "I shall say nothing; all the same, I don't like it. But Leicester'll give up the whole idea to-morrow. He'd never have thought of it to-night if he hadn't been drunk."
"I drunk, my friends! I am as sober as the Nonconforming parson of the church that Miss Castlemaine attends. I'm as serious as a judge. No, no, I stand on principle—principle, my friends. I have a theory of life, and I stand by it, and I am ready to make sacrifices."
"But how are you to get an introduction?" asked Sprague. Evidently he was uneasy in his mind.
"Leave that to me; I ask you to do nothing but to hold your tongues, and that you've promised to do. I stand alone. I'm like your Martin Luther of old times. Against me are arrayed conventions and orthodoxy, pride and prejudice, thunders temporal and spiritual, but I fear them not. I—I, a poor solitary cynic, am stronger than you all, because I stand on the truth, and you stand on sentiment, convention, orthodoxy. Gentlemen, I drink to you in very mediocre club whisky; nay, I don't drink to you, I drink to the man who stands on the truth—truth, gentlemen, truth!"
Again he lifted a glass of whisky to his lips and set it down empty.
"I'm going to bed," said Sprague.
"And I," said Purvis.
"And I, gentlemen," said Leicester, "remain here. Like all men who undertake great enterprises, I must make my plans. As a champion of truth I must vindicate it. I live to rid the world of lies, of sham, of hypocrisy. Good-night, gentlemen, good-night."