“Or at least you never pray,” added Hadria.
Both Professors looked at her, each with an expression of enquiry. It was difficult to understand from exactly what sources of experience or intuition the singular remark could have sprung.
The conversation took a slight swerve.
Professor Theobald contended that all our fond distinctions of vice and virtue, right and wrong, were mere praise and blame of conditions and events.
“We like to fancy the qualities of character inherent, while really they are laid on by slow degrees, like paint, and we name our acquaintance by the colour of his last coat.”
This view offended Miss Du Prel. Joseph Fleming and Lord Engleton rallied round her. Hubert Temperley joined them. Man, the sublime, the summit of the creation, the end and object of the long and painful processes of nature; sin-spotted perhaps, weak and stumbling, but still the masterpiece of the centuries—was this great and mysterious creature to be thought of irreverently as a mere plain surface for paint? Only consider it! Professor Theobald’s head went down between his shoulders as he laughed.
“The sublime creature would not look well unpainted, believe me.”
“He dare not appear in that plight even to himself, if Theobald be right in what he stated just now,” said Professor Fortescue.
“Life to a character is like varnish to wood,” asserted Miss Du Prel; “it brings out the grain.”
“Ah!” cried Professor Theobald, “Then you insist on varnish, I on paint.”