A conversation between the Poet and his host had obviously been in progress for several minutes. Toftrees realised that he had been lost in his own thoughts for some time--if indeed this scene was real at all and he himself were sober!
". . . I don't think," Lothian was saying with precision, and a certain high air which sat well upon him--"I don't think that you quite see it in all its bearings. There must be a rough and ready standard for ordinary work-a-day life--that I grant. But when you penetrate to the springs of action----"
"When you do that," Amberley interrupted, "naturally, rough and ready standards fall to pieces. Still we have to live by them. Few of us are competent to manipulate the more delicate machinery! But your conclusion is--?"
"--That hypocrisy is the most misunderstood and distorted word in our mother tongue. The man whom fools call hypocrite may yet be entirely sincere. Lofty assertions, the proclamation of high ideals and noble thoughts may at the same time be allied with startling moral failure!"
"It's specious," he replied, "and it's doubtless highly comforting for the startling moral failure. But I find a difficulty in adjusting my obstinate mind to the point of view."
"It _is_ difficult," Lothian said, "but that's because so few people are psychologists, and so few people--the Priests often seem to me less than any one--understand the meaning of Christianity. But because David was a murderer and an adulterer will you tell me that the psalms are insincere? Surely, if all that is good in a man or woman is to be invalidated by the presence of contradictory evil, then Beelzebub must sit enthroned and be potent over the affairs of men!"
Mr. Amberley rose from his chair. His face had quite lost its watchful expression. It was genial and pleased as before.
"King David has a great deal to answer for," he said. "I don't know what the unorthodox and the 'live-your-own-life' school would do without him. But let us go into the drawing room."
With his rich, hearty laugh echoing under the Waggon roof, the big man thrust his arm through Lothian's.
"There are two girls dying to talk to the poet!" he said. "That I happen to know! My daughter Muriel reads your books in bed, I believe! and her friend Miss Wallace was saying all sorts of nice things about you at dinner. Come along, come along, my dear boy."