"It is we who are wicked, Mr. Brooks," she said, "who spend no end of money and close our ears to all this. Do take this, will you; can it go to some of the women you know, and the children? There are only five or six pounds there, but I shall talk to mamma. We will send you a cheque."

He took the money without hesitation.

"I am very glad," he said, earnestly, "that you have given me this, that you have felt that you wanted to give it me. I hope you won't think too badly of me for coming over here to help you spend a pleasant evening, and talking at all of such miserable things."

"Badly!" she repeated. "No; I shall never be able to thank you enough for telling me what you have done. It makes one feel almost wicked to be sitting here, and wearing jewelry, and feeling well off, spending money on whatever you want, and to think that there are people starving.

How they must hate us."

"It is the wonderful part of it," he answered. "I do not believe that they do. I suppose it is a sort of fatalism--the same sort of thing, only much less ignoble, as the indifference which keeps our rich people contented and deaf to this terribly human cry."

"You are young," she said, looking at him, "to be so much interested in such serious things."

"It is my blood, I suppose," he answered. "My father was a police-court missionary, and my mother the matron of a pauper hospital."

"They are both dead, are they not?" she asked, softly.

"Many years ago," he answered.

Lady Caroom and Lord Arranmore came in together. A certain unusual seriousness in Sybil's face was manifest.

"You two do not seem to have been amusing yourselves," Lady Caroom remarked, giving her hand to Brooks.

"Mr. Brooks has been answering some of my questions about the poor people," Sybil answered, "and it is not an amusing subject."

Lord Arranmore laughed lightly, and there was a touch of scorn in the slight curve of his fine lips and his raised eyebrows. He stood away from the shaded lamplight before a great open fire of cedar logs, and the red glow falling fitfully upon his face seemed to Brooks, watching him with more than usual closeness, to give him something of a Mephistopheles aspect. His evening clothes hung with more than ordinary precision about his long slim body, his black tie and black pearl stud supplied the touch of sombreness so aptly in keeping with the mirthless, bitter smile which still parted his lips.

"You must not take Mr. Brooks too seriously on the subject of the poor people," he said, the mockery of his smile well matched in his tone.

"Brooks is an enthusiast--one, I am afraid, of those misguided people who have barred the way to progress for centuries. If only they could be converted!"

Lady Caroom sighed.

"Oh, dear, how enigmatic!" she exclaimed. "Do be a little more explicit."

"Dear lady," he continued, turning to her, "it is not worth while. Yet I sometimes wonder whether people realize how much harm this hysterical philanthropy--this purely sentimental faddism, does; how it retards the natural advance of civilization, throws dust in people's eyes, salves the easy conscience of the rich man, who bargains for immortality with a few strokes of the pen, and finds mischievous occupation for a good many weak minds and parasitical females. Believe me, that all personal charity is a mistake. It is a good deal worse than that. It is a crime."

Sybil rose up, and a little unusual flush had stained her cheeks.

"I still do not understand you in the least, Lord Arranmore," she said.

"It seems to me that you are making paradoxical and ridiculous statements, which only bewilder us. Why is charity a crime? That is what I should like to hear you explain."

Lord Arranmore bowed slightly.

"I had no idea," he said, leaning his elbow upon the mantelpiece, "that I was going to be inveigled into a controversy. But, my dear Sybil, I will do my best to explain to you what I mean, especially as at your age you are not likely to discover the truth for yourself. In the first place, charity of any sort is the most insidious destroyer of moral character which the world has ever known. The man who once accepts it, even in extremes, imbibes a poison from which his system can never be thoroughly cleansed. You let him loose upon society, and the evil which you have sown in him spreads. He is like a man with an infectious disease. He is a source of evil to the community. You have relieved a physical want, and you have destroyed a moral quality. I do not need to point out to you that the balance is on the wrong side."

Sybil glanced across at Brooks, and he smiled back at her.

"Lord Arranmore has not finished yet," he said. "Let us hear the worst."

Their host smiled.

"After all," he said, "why do I waste my breath? From the teens to the thirties sentiment smiles. It is only later on in life that reason has any show at all. Yet you should ask yourselves, you eager self-denying young people, who go about with a healthy moral glow inside because you have fed the poor, or given an hour or so of your time to the distribution of reckless charity-you should ask yourselves: What is the actual good of ministering to the outward signs of an internal disease?

You are simply trying to renovate the outside when the inside is filthy.

Don't you see, my dear young people, that to give a meal to one starving man may be to do him indeed good, but it does nothing towards preventing another starving man from taking his place to-morrow. You stimulate the disease, you help it to spread. Don't you see where instead you should turn--to the social laws, the outcome of which is that starving man? You let them remain unharmed, untouched, while you fall over one another in frantic efforts to brush away to-day's effect of an eternal cause. Let your starving man die, let the bones break through his skin and carry him up--him and his wife and their children, and their fellows--to your House of Commons. Tell them that there are more to-morrow, more the next day, let the millions of the lower classes look this thing in the face. I tell you that either by a revolution, which no doubt some of us would find worse than inconvenient, or by less drastic means, the thing would right itself. You, who work to relieve the individual, only postpone and delay the millennium. People will keep their eyes closed as long as they can. It is you who help them to do so."

"Dinner is served, my lord," the butler announced.

Lord Arranmore extended his arm to Lady Caroom.

"Come," he said, "let us all be charitable to one another, for I too am starving."

CHAPTER XIV

AN AWKWARD QUESTION

"You think they really liked it, then?"

"How could they help it? It was such a delightful idea of yours, and I am sure all that you said was so simple and yet suggestive. Good-night, Mr. Brooks."

They stood in the doorway of the Secular Hall, where Brooks had just delivered his lecture. It seemed to him that her farewell was a little abrupt.

"I was going to ask," he said, "whether I might not see you home."

She hesitated.

"Really," she said, "I wish you would not trouble. It is quite a long way, and I have only to get into a car.

"The further the better," he answered, "and besides, if your uncle is at home I should like to come in and see him."

She made no further objection, yet Brooks fancied that her acquiescence was, to some extent, involuntary. He walked by her side in silence for a moment or two, wondering whether there was indeed any way in which he could have offended her.

"I have not seen you," he remarked, "since the evening of your dinner-party."

"No!"

"You were out when I called."

"I have so many things to do--just now. We can get a car here."

He looked at it.

"It is too full," he said. "Let us walk on for a little way. I want to talk to you."

The car was certainly full, so after a moment's hesitation she acquiesced.

"You will bring your girls again, I hope?" he asked.