"If people are rich," Madeline retorted warmly, "they have surely the right to enjoy themselves in their own way so long as they do no wrong."
"Enjoy themselves," he snorted. "Is enjoyment the end of life?—and such enjoyment! Has duty no place in the scheme of existence? Because people have grown rich through somebody else's toil——"
"Or through their own toil," she interrupted.
"Or through their own toil—if any man ever did it—are they justified in wasting their life in idle gluttony, and in wasteful and wanton extravagance?"
"Extravagance is surely a question of degree," she replied. "A hundred dollars to one man may be more than ten thousand to another."
"I admit it. But your idle profligate, whether man or woman, is an offence."
"What do you mean by profligate?"
"I mean the creature who lives to eat and drink and dress. Who shirks every duty and responsibility, who panders to every gluttonous and selfish desire. Who hears the cry of suffering and never helps, who wastes his or her substance in finding fresh sources of so-called enjoyment, or discovering new thrills of sensation."
"But we surely have a right to enjoy ourselves?"
"Of course we have. But not after the fashion of swine. We are not animals. We are men and women with intellectual vision and moral responsibility. The true life lies along the road of duty and help and goodwill."