"What is beauty," said Molara, "but what we choose to admire?"
"Do we choose? Have we the power?" asked Savrola.
"Certainly," answered the President; "and every year we alter our decisions; every year the fashion changes. Ask the ladies. Look at the fashions of thirty years ago; they were thought becoming then. Observe the different styles of painting that have succeeded each other, or of poetry, or of music. Besides, Monsieur de Stranoff's goddess, though beautiful to him, might not be so to another."
"I regard that also as a real advantage; you make me more enamoured with my religion each moment. I do not worship my ideals for the reclamé," said the Ambassador with a smile.
"You look at the question from a material point of view."
"Material rather than moral," said Lady Ferrol.
"But in the spirit-worship of my goddess the immorality is immaterial. Besides, if you say that our tastes are always changing, it seems to me that constancy is the essence of my religion."
"That is a paradox which we shall make you explain," said Molara.
"Well, you say I change each day, and my goddess changes too. To-day I admire one standard of beauty, to-morrow another, but when to-morrow comes I am no longer the same person. The molecular structure of my brain is altered; my ideas have changed; my old self has perished, loving its own ideal; the renovated ego starts life with a new one. It is all a case of wedded till death."
"You are not going to declare that constancy is a series of changes? You may as well assert that motion is a succession of halts."