So she lost the pity she had roused in him. He felt himself defied and he said: "Everything must be pleasant and easy for a man and his wife in these days. If God did not ordain that the giving of life be wholly convenient and cause no interruption in pleasure, so much the worse for God or at least for the sacred function of giving life. It must be sacrificed, with everything else, for pleasure. Self-gratification, pleasure, it is the end of all!"
He wiped his brow with the palm of his strong thin hand. "I can distinctly remember, Fidelia, when I first read an account of a philosophy which put up the pursuit of pleasure as the proper aim of life and when I learned that considerable groups of people had lived who deliberately fashioned their lives on the satisfaction of their appetites and who considered that the gratification of the senses brought them the greatest good. 'Pleasure is the end of all,' they said.
"When I read that in my university days, little more than a generation ago, Fidelia, this part of the world, at least, was still serious and soberminded and close enough to God so that this philosophy seemed to me only a peculiar relic of a past paganism. But I have lived to see my world give itself over to the pursuit of pleasure as the end of all and to see my son and his wife deny their duties to themselves and to God for the purpose of self-gratification."
"Why, father Herrick, David and I go to church!" Fidelia cried.
He shook his head in despair and turned his back upon her. Not only had he made no effect—so he
