your business--unless he _wants_ you to help him to improve; and even
then you have to be very delicate-handed. It must _hurt_ you to have
to wish him different."

"But isn't that what you call sentimental?" said Vincent.

"No," said Father Payne, "it is sentiment to try to pretend to yourself and
others that the fault isn't there. But I am speaking of a tie which you
can't risk breaking for anything so trivial as a fault. The moment that the
fault stands out, naked and unpleasant, then you may know that the
friendship is over. There must be a glamour even about your friend's
faults. You must love them, as you love the dints and cracks in an old
building."

"That seems to me weak," said Vincent.

"You will find that it is true," said Father Payne. "We can't afford to sit
in judgment on each other. We must simply try to help each other along. We
must not say, 'You ought not to be tired.'"

"But surely we may pity people?" said Lestrange.

"Not your friends," said Father Payne. "Pity is _fatal_ to friendship.
There is always something complacent in pity--it means conscious strength.
You can't both pity and admire. You can't separate people up into
qualities--they all come out of the depth of a man; I am quite sure of
this, that the moment you begin to differentiate a friend's qualities, that
moment what I call friendship is over. It must simply be a case of you and
me--not my weakness and your virtue, and still less your weakness and my
virtue. And you must be content to lose friends and to be discarded by