"After what's happened to us here I guess human nature isn't going to find a champion in me," Hazel went on. "Still, it's pretty hard to lose your faith in human nature that way."
"Lose? Who said 'lose'?" cried the man, with a cordial laugh. "Not I. If I suddenly found it 'honest,' why, I'd hate to go on living. Human nature's got to be just as it is. Honesty lies in Nature. That's the honesty that folks talk about and dream about. It isn't practicable in human life. Dishonesty is the leavening that makes honesty, in the abstract, palatable. Say, think of it—if we were all honest like idealists talk of. What would we have worth living for? Do you know what would happen? Why, we'd all be sitting around making hymns for everybody else to sing, till there was such an almighty hullabaloo we'd all get crazy and have to sign a petition to get it stopped. We'd all be fixed up in a sort of white suit that wouldn't ever need a laundry, and every blamed citizen would start right in to turn the world into a sort of hell by always telling the truth. Just think what it would mean if you had to tell some friend of yours what you thought of her for sneaking your latest beau."
"It certainly would be liable to cause a deal of trouble," laughed Hazel.
"Trouble? I should say." The millionaire chuckled softly as he returned his cigar to his mouth. "Say, I was reading the obituary of a preacher—my wife's favorite—the other day. He lost his grip on life and fell through. That reporter boy was bright, and I wondered when I was reading what he'd have said if he'd spoke the truth as he saw it. To read that obituary you'd think that preacher feller was the greatest saint ever lived. I felt I could have wept over that poor feller, the talk was so elegant and poetic. I just felt the worst worm ever lived beside that preacher. I felt I ought to spend the last five dollars I had to fix his grave up with pure white lilies, if I had to go without food to do it. It was fine. But the writer never said a word about that preacher living in a swell house in Fifth Avenue, and the $20,000 he took every year for his job, and the elegant automobile he chased around to the houses of his rich congregation in. If he'd died in the slums on the east side I guess that newspaper wouldn't ever have heard of him, and that writer wouldn't have got dollars for the pretty language it was his job to scratch together for such an occasion."
"It doesn't sound nice put that way," sighed Hazel. "I suppose it's all competition even trying to make folks live right. I suppose that preacher was successful in his calling—the same as you are in yours. I suppose his human nature was no different to other folks'."
"That's it. Life's splendidly dishonest and a perfect sham. Come to think of it, Ananias must have been all sorts of a great man to be singled out of a world of liars. On the other hand, he'd have had some rival in the feller who first accused George Washington of never lying. Psha! life's a great play, and I'd hate it to be different from what it is. We're all just as dishonest as we can be and still keep out of penitentiary: which makes me feel mighty sorry for them that don't. From the fisherman to the Sunday-school teacher we're all liars, and if you charged us with it we'd deny it, or worse, and thereby add further proof to the charge. I've thought a deal over this hold-up, and it seems to me those guys bluffed us some."
"You mean about the—ransom," said Hazel, the last sign of amusement dying swiftly out of her eyes.
"Why, yes." The millionaire smoked in silence for some moments. Then quite suddenly he removed the cigar from between his lips. "Maybe you don't know I'm working on a big land scheme in these parts. It seems to me some bright gang intend to roll me for my wad. I don't guess Slosson's in it."
"Then who is it, sir?" demanded the girl, with unconscious sharpness.
The man's steady eyes surveyed her through their half-closed lids. He shook his head.