never had that virtue, and I certainly cannot begin to cultivate
it now."

"Had you ever any virtues?" she asked in a playful tone of
something like satire.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I do not know what you consider virtues," he answered lightly:
"If honesty is one, I have that. I make no pretence to be what I
am not. I would not pass off somebody else's picture as my own,
for instance. But I cannot sham to be moral. I could not possibly
love a woman without wanting her all to myself, and I have not the
slightest belief in the sanctimonious humbug of a man who plays
the Platonic lover only. But I don't cheat, and I don't lie. I am
what I am. ..."

"A man!" said Ziska, a lurid and vindictive light dilating and
firing her wonderful eyes. "A man!--the essence of all that is
evil, the possibility of all that is good! But the essence is
strong and works; the possibility is a dream which dissolves in
the dreaming!"

"Yes, you are right, ma chere!" he responded carelessly.
"Goodness--as the world understands goodness--never makes a career
for itself worth anything. Even Christ, who has figured as a
symbol of goodness for eighteen hundred years, was not devoid of
the sin of ambition: He wanted to reign over all Judaea."

"You view Him in that light?" inquired Ziska with a keen look.