l of reproaches.
He will say that it isn't the first time that he has found how the increase
of wealth makes people ungenerous. Oh, don't I know every step of the way!
He is going to have the money, and he is going to put me in the wrong: that
is his plan, and it is going to come off. I shall be in the wrong: I feel
in the wrong already!"

"Then in that case there is certainly no necessity for losing the money
too!" said Rose.

"It's all very well for you to talk in that impersonal way, Rose," said
Father Payne. "Of course I know very well that you would handle the
situation kindly and decisively; but you don't know what it is to suffer
from politeness like a disease. I have done nothing wrong except that I
have been polite when I might have been dry. I see right through the man,
but he is absolutely impervious; and it is my accursed politeness that
makes it impossible for me to say bluntly what I know he will dislike and
what he genuinely will not understand. I know what you are thinking, every
one of you--that I say lots of things that you dislike--but then you
_do_ understand! I could no more tell this wretch the truth than I
could trample on a blind old man."

"What will you really do?" said Barthrop.

"I shall send him the money," said Father Payne firmly, "and I shall
compliment him on his delicacy; and then, thank God, I shall forget, until
it all begins again. I am a wretched old opportunist, of course; a sort of
Ally Sloper--not fit company for strong and concise young men!"

XXXI

OF INSTINCTS

I do not remember what led to this remark of Father Payne's:--"It's a
painful fact, from the ethical point of view, that qualities are more
admired, and more beautiful indeed, the more instinctive they are. We don't
admire the faculty of taking pains very much. The industrious boy at school
is rather disliked than otherwise, while the brilliant boy who can construe
his lesson without learning it is envied. Take a virtue like courage: the
love of danger, the contempt of fear, the power of dashing headlong into a
thing without calculating the consequences is the kind of courage we
admire. The person who is timid and anxious, and yet just manages
desperately to screw himself up to the sticking-point, does not get nearly
as much credit as the bold devil-may-care person. It is so with most
performances; we admire ease and rapidity much more than perseverance and
tenacity, what obviously costs little effort rath