"I think it is essentially a question of the preponderance of numbers," she added more quietly. "Warped and twisted minds are in the minority. If more than half the world had club feet, we should not think the club-footed man a cripple."
"Ah! that is just the mistake that every one makes nowadays. Unnatural minds are far more common, and therefore, according to the middle-class view, more natural than people choose to suppose. I believe that the tyranny of minorities is the plague that we suffer under. How intensely interesting it would be to take a census of vices. Why should we take infinite trouble to find out how old we are. Age is a question of temperament, just as youth is a question of health. We are not interesting because of what we are, but because of what we do."
"But we reveal what we are by our acts."
Esmé Amarinth looked at her with surprised compassion.
"Forgive me," he said. "That is a curious old fallacy that lingers among us like an old faith, unable to get away from people's minds because it has literally not a leg to stand upon, or to walk with. We reveal what we are not by our acts."
"How can that be? By our words. Surely that is what you mean?"
"No, we lie indeed perpetually. That is what makes life so curious, and sometimes so interesting. We lie to the world in open deeds, to ourselves in secret deeds. We have a beautiful passion for all that is theatrical, and we have two kinds of plays in which we indulge our desire of mumming, the plays that we act for others, and the plays that we act for ourselves. Both are interesting, but the latter are engrossing. Our secret virtues, our secret vices, are the plays that we act for our own benefit. Both are equally selfish, and bizarre, and full of imagination. We make vices of our virtues, and virtues of our vices. The former we consider the duty that we owe to others, the latter the duty that we owe to ourselves. If we practise the latter with the greatest earnestness, are stricter about the rehearsals, in fact, it is not wonderful."
"But then, if you explain everything away like that, there is no residuum left. Where is the reality? Where is the real man?"
Mr. Amarinth smiled with a wide sweetness.
"The real man is a Mrs. Harris," he replied. "There is, believe me, 'no sich a person.'"