If he had really murdered a man, if he had really deserted a woman,
he would not be able to feel that a pistol or a love-letter was like a song--
at least, not a comic song."
"Do not imagine, please, that any such attitude is easy
to me or appeals in any particular way to my sympathies.
I am an Irishman, and a certain sorrow is in my bones, bred either
of the persecutions of my creed, or of my creed itself.
Speaking singly, I feel as if man was tied to tragedy,
and there was no way out of the trap of old age and doubt.
But if there is a way out, then, by Christ and St. Patrick,
this is the way out. If one could keep as happy as a child or a dog,
it would be by being as innocent as a child, or as sinless as a dog.
Barely and brutally to be good--that may be the road, and he may have
found it. Well, well, well, I see a look of skepticism on the face
of my old friend Moses. Mr. Gould does not believe that being
perfectly good in all respects would make a man merry."
"No," said Gould, with an unusual and convincing gravity;
"I do not believe that being perfectly good in all respects
would make a man merry."
"Well," said Michael quietly, "will you tell me one thing?
Which of us has ever tried it?"
A silence ensued, rather like the silence of some long geological
epoch which awaits the emergence of some unexpected type;
for there rose at last in the stillness a massive figure
that the other men had almost completely forgotten.
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