religion to make him honest! I scorn the notion. A man must be just and
true because he is a man! Surely a man may keep clear of the thing he
loathes! For my own honor," he added, with a curl of his lip, "I shall
at least do nothing disgraceful, however I may fall short of the
angelic."

"I doubt," murmured Molly, "whether a man is a man until he knows God."

But Walter, if he heard the words, neither heeded nor answered them. He
was far from understanding the absurdity of doing right from love of
self.

He was no hypocrite. He did turn from what seemed to him degrading. But
there were things degrading which he did not see to be such, things on
which some men to whom he did not yet look up, would have looked down.
Also there was that in his effort to sustain his self-respect which was
far from pure: he despised such as had failed; and to despise the human
because it has fallen, is to fall from the human. He had done many
little things he ought to be, and one day must be, but as yet felt no
occasion to be--ashamed of. So long as they did not trouble him they
seemed nowhere. Many a youth starts in life like him, possessed with the
idea, not exactly formulated, that he is a most precious specimen of
pure and honorable humanity. It comes of self-ignorance, and a low ideal
taken for a high one. Such are mainly among the well-behaved, and never
doubt themselves a prize for any woman. They color their notion of
themselves with their ideal, and then mistake the one for the other. The
mass of weaknesses and conceits that compose their being they compress
into their ideal mold of man, and then regard the shape as their own.
What composes it they do not heed.