“Well, David, that’s moral. Suppose my ideas shock you. They do most persons. You asked just now what I’ve picked up these ten years. That’s about the most important,—judging men by their codes. A man who’s got a code of morals is moral, whether he’s a libertine, a horse thief or—a minister. We start with about a hundred and fifty inhibitions that are poured into our ears; we end with about five or six fences which, no matter what happens, we won’t cross.”
“Don’t get you.”
“Take your man of the world, who considers every woman fair game; go further down; take one who’ll think nothing of taking a woman to pay his debts, use one woman to pay what he gives another; yet there are certain things he won’t do. He won’t cheat at cards. That’s a code. Take your criminal type. If there is something stops him somewhere—say that it’s only going to the gallows without ‘peaching’ on a friend—that’s a code,—his code of morals, and, by that, he’s moral!”
“You’re not serious,” I said, laughing.
“Never more so. Think me crazy—wild—eccentric—anything you want. I’m looking from the bottom up towards your top-heavy society and your morality, and I tell you that it’s only the man who won’t stop at anything, who’ll cheat, lie, steal, seduce a young girl, traffic in women—a man incapable of a code—that is absolutely, hopelessly immoral. Look here; you’re still looking at things from a moral point of view; you can’t help it. I’m just looking on—recognizing things as they are—interested in the human game. You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
“Frankly—yes.”
“You think I’m bitter—a rebel—my head against everything. Perhaps so; once, very much so. Not now. Fact, I’m rather more of an optimist than you. If we got down to it, you’d find I had a better opinion of mankind than you.”
The excitement into which his defence of himself had worked him started a coughing fit. Toinon came in and looked at me in warning. I rose immediately, holding out my hand.
“Well, Alan, I don’t have to agree with you, do I, to say that I’m honestly glad to talk to you?”