LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM
say that all men who do not lead that happy life are knaves and fools. The physical cripple, you know, poor devil, I count a sort of bodily fool."
"Yes," weighed Lewisham, "I suppose he is."
"Now a fool fails of happiness because of his insufficient mind, he miscalculates, he stumbles and hobbles, some cant or claptrap whirls him away; he gets passion out of a book and a wife out of the stews, or he quarrels on a petty score; threats frighten him, vanity beguiles him, he fails by blindness. But the knave who is not a fool fails against the light. Many knaves are fools also—most are—but some are not. I know—I am a knave but no fool. The essence of your knave is that he lacks the will, the motive capacity to seek his own greater good. The knave abhors persistence. Strait is the way and narrow the gate; the knave cannot keep to it and the fool cannot find it."
Lewisham lost something of what Chaffery was saying by reason of a rap outside. He rose, but Ethel was before him. He concealed his anxiety as well as he could, and was relieved when he heard the front door close again and her footsteps pass into the bedroom by the passage door. He reverted to Chaffery.
"Has it ever occurred to you," asked Chaffery, apparently à propos of nothing, "that intellectual conviction is no motive at all? Any more than a railway map will run a train a mile."
"Eh?" said Lewisham. "Map—run a train a mile—of course, yes. No, it won't."
"That is precisely my case," said Chaffery. "That
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