As they walked along, Roddy suddenly exclaimed:
“What fools are clever folk!”
Surely his hours of melancholy had not returned, she thought.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because my enemies—my unknown mysterious enemies—your enemies—are fools, Elma, my darling.” And then perhaps for a moment they caught sight of each other’s souls.
“Perhaps they are. But we must both be guarded against them,” the girl said as he walked beside her.
“Guarded! Yes, Poor Edna has fallen their victim. Next, my darling, it might be you yourself! But of the motive I can discern nothing.”
“I! What have I done?” cried the girl, looking straight at him. “No, surely I can have no enemies.”
“We all have enemies, darling. Ah! you do not yet realise that in our life to-day falsehoods are daily food and that a lie is small coinage in which the interchange of the world, francs, marks, dollars, or diplomacy, is carried on to the equal convenience of us all. Lying lips are no longer an abomination. They are part of our daily existence.”
“You are horribly philosophic, Roddy!” she said with a laugh. “But I quite understand that it is so. The scandals in politics and in society prove it every day.”