- mediately, and there is nothing for us then but the
river or the Great Trades' Union."
"That is what the world would call being 'sent up.' Yet if the simplest terms were not subject to totally different meanings in the varying strata of our society, we should not have so many of these pretty paradoxes to subsist upon. But I feel, Diomeda, that I am entitled to ask you one question. Was it in my capacity as a mentally dishonest person that you came to me to-night to ask me to arrange for you to be 'sent down' from your university?"
"Answer that question to your own liking, beloved one. It was your appeal on my behalf that brought me here to-night. Would you have me ask whether you were mentally honest when you made it?"
Her laugh had an edge that cut him like a keen blade. But she was quick to read the sharp thrill of pain that made his eyes grow dark.
"Do not repine, my beloved Achilles," she said with a softness that had the power to caress, "I found you after all to be as honest as I am myself."
"At least," said the young man, sensible that even her lightest caresses possessed the ferocity of those of the snake and the tiger, "you are the first of your sex with whom I have conversed who appears to understand the uses of paradox."
"There is no other means by which the honest mind can carry on its thinking."
"If that is the case, you conduct the thinker to his doom with atrocious certainty. You conduct him to the gutter."
