— IX —PUT TO THE TEST
If it is true what the Prophets write,
That the heathen gods are all stocks and stones;
Shall we, for the sake of being polite,
Feed them with the juice of our marrow-bones?
—Blake
When a young man of spirit finds himself suddenly scorned and rejected by the mistress he adores, his most obvious course is to plunge into reckless dissipation, which may haply reach her ears, a result of which the advantages are too clear to need demonstration. Nor must he omit to rail against the false one and her s*x with all the cynicism he can command. But Ronald Campion, hard hit as he was, could not have been a young man of spirit, for he did neither the one nor the other. Not the first, because, in spite of everything, he still hoped, and was determined to do nothing now whic
