he wants to be high-minded too. He
wants me to press him to take the money, to prevail upon him to accept it
as a favour. He implies that if I hadn't begun by paying his debts
originally, he would not have ever acquired what he calls 'the unhappy
habit of dependence.' Of course he doesn't think that really: he wants the
money, but he also wants to feel dignified. 'If I thought it would make you
happier if I accepted it,' he says, 'of course I should view the matter
differently. It would give me a reason for accepting what I must confess
would be a humiliation,' Isn't that infernal? Then he says that I may
perhaps think that his troubles have coarsened him, but that he unhappily
retains all his old sensitiveness. Then he goes on to say that it was I who
encouraged him to preserve a high standard of delicacy in these matters."

"He must be a precious rascal," said Vincent.

"No, he isn't," said Father Payne, "that's the worst of it--but he is a
frantic poseur. He has got so used to talking and thinking about his
feelings, that he doesn't know what he really does feel. That's the part of
it which bothers me: because if he was a mere hypocrite, I would say so
plainly. One must not be taken in by apparent hypocrisy. It often
represents what a man did once really think, but which has become a mere
memory. One must not be hard on people's reminiscences. Don't you know how
the mildest people are often disposed to make out that they were reckless
and daring scapegraces at school? That isn't a lie; it is imagination
working on very slender materials."

We laughed at this, and then Barthrop said, "Let me write to him, Father. I
won't be offensive."

"I know you wouldn't," said Father Payne; "but no one can help me. It's not
my fault, but my misfortune. It all comes of acting for the best. I ought
to have paid his debts, and made myself thoroughly unpleasant about it.
What I did was to be indulgent and sympathetic. It's all that accursed
sentimentality that does it. I have been trying to write a letter to him
all the morning, showing him up to himself without being brutal. But he
will only write back and say that I have made him miserable, and that I
have wholly misunderstood him: and then I shall explain and apologise; and
then he will take the money to show that he forgives me. I see a horrible
vista of correspondence ahead. After four or five letters, I shall not have
the remotest idea what it is all about, and he will be ful