“Why not?”
“We are so hedged by the ethics of the world that no escape is open. Fashion, vanity, prejudice, and greed—these are our task-masters. Life is like a path spiked on either side with thorns. We toil on in the dust while beyond us gleam the gardens of the blessed, unapproachable and lovely.”
“Who, then, are the blessed?”
“The blessed are those who have fought their fight like giants and have conquered. There are they who have scorned the laws of expediency and error. There are they who have lived true to their own souls. There are they who have not fallen to the flesh. Liberty is the guerdon, joy, and the light of truth.”
“And yet you are not among them.”
“I—indeed!”
There was a fine self-scorn in his voice that was almost dramatic.
“No,” he said; “I cannot flatter myself with any degree of heroism; it is only great souls who die for an ideal. The noblest life that was ever lived on earth had to end in a martyrdom that it might strike home to the hearts of men. I have been nothing but a martyr to my own egotism. Having once struck my colors to that black pirate Expediency on the high seas of life, I suppose I must be content to feel my soul in shackles.”
Joan was pulling at the moss upon the stones with her long, white fingers. Her eyes were on the distant woods; they were dark as with thought, and wondrously pathetic.
“A new sun seemed to swim into the sky,” she said, “when I read of the martyrdom on Calvary. That was a great life.”