"You mean that we are not anxious to find the truth?"
"Exactly. Mind you, I do not say that you English people who boast of your honesty do not in theory hold that truth is the great thing to be sought after; but in action, in life, no. Let a man be true to truth and he is put down as a madman, a fool."
"Would you mind giving an example?"
"A dozen if you like. Here is one. It is a commonly accepted theory that well-being, happiness, depends not on what we possess, but on what we are. That 'to be' is more than 'to have.' How many are true to their creed? One in a million? Where one spends his energies in enriching his life, a million spend theirs on seeking to obtain what by common consent is evanescent. If half the energy were spent on beautifying character that is spent on 'getting on' in the ordinary acceptance of the term, what Christians call the millennium would come."
"Are you not assuming a great deal, signore?"
"But what, signorina?"
"That you understand the motives of the human heart?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"One judges by what one sees," he said. "And it is best to content oneself with that. The man who looks beneath the surface goes mad."
"And yet you are not mad?" and she laughed gaily.