she quoted. "That is so; it is better, safer to deal with--to explain
away if it is found out, to deceive with if it is not. But it is not
half so easy as the whole truth; that is the easiest thing in the
world; it takes no ingenuity, no brains, no courage, no acting, no
feeling the pulse of your people, no bolstering up or watching or
remembering. If I wanted to teach the beauty of truth, I would set my
pupils to do a little artistic white lying on their own account, to
make things look four times as good as they really were, and not to
forget to make them square together, that would teach them the
advantage of truth."

"Do you think so?" Rawson-Clew said. "It is not the usual opinion;
fools and cowards are generally supposed to be the great dealers in
deceit and subterfuge."

"May be," Julia allowed; "but I don't happen to have come across that
sort much; the other I have, and I am just about sick of it--I am sick
of pretending and shamming and double-dealing, of saying one thing and
implying another, and meaning another still--you don't know what it
feels like, you have never had to do it; you wouldn't, of course; very
likely you couldn't, even. I am weary of it; I am weary of the whole
thing."

Rawson-Clew screwed the glass into his eye carefully but did not look
at her; he had an idea she would rather not. "What is it?" he asked
kindly. "What has gone wrong to-night? Too much pudding again?"

"No," she answered, with a quick, if partial, recovery; "too much
humbug, too much self. I have seen a great deal of myself lately, and