This stung Dick into action. He moved forward a step, and the colour came back to his face.
"Whether you like or don't like," he said, "you shall hear me now. You shall hear what I've got to say, and, by God, you won't forget it. For I'm speaking truth, and you will know it's truth. I have never taken the stand among men that you have. I did not want to, if I could have done it. But you have chosen to stand where you do stand in the eyes of the world. You have chosen to be known in the Force and far beyond it as a man whose judgment and whose word and whose advice should be trusted. You have chosen that men should know your opinions and should know that you walked by them. You were not afraid of being judged. Perhaps you sometimes invited judgment. Can you deny that?"
Tempest did not attempt to. His face had not changed.
"And do you see what you are doing now? You who allowed yourself to be considered as an example? Do you see what you have done now that you have put your name in the mouth of every man as the name of one who is eager and willing to sink all his ideals, all the weight of his influence, all his power for the gratification of what he knows to be the lower—the lowest part of his nature."
Tempest's lips moved, but no sound came from them. His face was changing now.
"You do know it!" Dick hurled the words at him. "And you shall surely know what you have done. You are committing one of the deadliest of sins, because you can't fall without dragging down all those whom you have allowed to believe in you. You can't fall without defiling all that truth and honour and virtue which you have chosen to make yourself the exponent of. You chose to take a high place—I don't say you were not fit for it. You were. But you can't leave that place without disgrace to more than yourself. You have chosen to wield a great influence, and now you are choosing to betray it. You say you are responsible to your God. What is your God going to say about it? The virtues that you are making a bonfire of are popularly supposed to belong to Him in the first place, aren't they?"
He stopped, but Tempest made no sound, no movement.
