Carrington gave another savage glance at my unlucky picture, and his gaze lingered on it as he added:
"If it's kept from her, all's well--as well as a lie can be."
And then, if only for a moment, the Greek gained its triumph over this startling exhibition of Hebraism.
"It is a masterpiece!" said Carrington, slowly, adding abruptly as he went, "Good-night!"
But my night was very bad. Whatever Miss Jones might say or think, I _did_ take life seriously.
A few days followed in which Miss Jones showed herself to me in a sweet and softened mood, the mood that wishes to make amends for salutary harshness. My meekness under reproof had evidently won her approbation. In the rests she talked to me. She gave me her opinions upon many subjects, and very admirable they were and very commonplace. One thing about Miss Jones, however, was not commonplace. She would certainly act up to her opinions. Her sense of duty was enormous; but she bore it pleasantly, albeit seriously. She had a keen _flair_ for responsibilities. I began to suspect that she had assumed my moral well-being as one of them.
Her priggishness was so unconscious--so sincere, if one may say so--that it staggered me. Her calmly complacent truisms confounded any subtleties by marching over them--utterly ignoring them. One could not argue with her, for she was so sublimely sure of herself that she made one doubt the divine right of good taste, and wonder if flat-footed stupidity were not right after all.
And, above all, however questionable her mental attributes might be, her moral worth was certainly awe-inspiring. The clear, metallic flawlessness of her conscience seemed to glare in one's eyes, and poor everyday manhood shrunk into itself, painfully aware of spots and fissures.
"Yes," Miss Jones said, leaning back in her incongruous robes; "yes, the longer I live the more I feel that, as Longfellow says:
She emphasized the quotation with solemnity: "We can't trifle with our lives; we can't play through them. We must _live_ them. We must make something of them."
"Each man after his own nature," I suggested, feebly, for I felt sure that "we can't _paint_ through them" was implied, and wished to turn from that issue, with which I felt myself incapable of grappling.