"Past midnight more likely, Miss Paget. May I ask how I have become Mr. Hawkehurst all of a sudden, when for the last three years I have been usually known as Valentine—or Val?"
The girl turned her head with a gesture in which the carelessness of his own manner was imitated. She stole a rapid look at him as she answered, "What does it matter whether I call you by one name or another?"
"What does anything matter? I believe Mr. Toots was an unconscious philosopher. There is nothing in the world of any consequence, except money. Go and look at those poor devils yonder, and you will see what that is worth," he cried, pointing to the lighted Kursaal; "there you behold the one great truth of the universe in action. There is nothing but money, and men are the slaves of money, and life is only another name for the pursuit of money. Go and look at beauty yonder fading in the light and heat; at youth that changes to age before your eyes; at friendship which turns to hate when the chances of the game are with my friend and against me. The Kursaal is the world in little, Diana; and this great globe of ours is nothing but a gigantic gaming-table—a mighty temple for the worship of the golden calf."
"Why do you imitate those people yonder, if you despise them so heartily?"
"Because I am like them and of them. I tell you that money is the beginning and end of all things. Why am I here, and why is my life made up of baseness and lies? Because my father was an improvident scoundrel, and did not leave me five hundred a year. I wonder what I should have been like, by the bye, if I had been blest with five hundred a year?"
"Honest and happy," answered the girl earnestly. She forgot her simulated indifference, and looked at him with sad earnest eyes. He met the glance, and the expression of his own face changed from its cynical smile to a thoughtful sadness.
"Honest perhaps; and yet I almost doubt if anything under five thousand a year would have kept me honest. Decidedly not happy; the men who can be happy on five hundred a year are made of a duller stuff than the clay which serves for a Hawkehurst."
"You talk about not being happy with five hundred a year!" Diana exclaimed impatiently. "Surely any decent existence would be happiness to you compared to the miserable life you lead,—the shameful, degraded life which shuts you out of the society of respectable people and reduces you to the level of a thief. If you had any pride, Valentine, you would feel it as bitterly as I do."
"But I haven't any pride. As for my life,—well, I suppose it is shameful and degraded, and I know that it's often miserable; but it suits me better than jog-trot respectability, I can dine one day on truffled turkey and champagne, another day upon bread and cheese and small beer; but I couldn't eat beef and mutton always. That's what kills people of my temperament. There are born scamps in the world, Diana, and I am one of them. My name is Robert Macaire, and I was created for the life I lead. Keep clear of me if you have any hankering after better things; but don't try to change my nature, for it is wasted labour."
"Valentine, it is so cruel of you to talk like that."