"And is this what your doctrine of sincerity comes to? This
fulsomeness! You're very little better than one of the wicked, it
seems to me! Well, I _hoped_ that you would approve of my
letting Sibyl take this thing up, but such _unbounded_ encouragement!"

"Oh, I don't wish to flatter," said Sewell, in the spirit of her
raillery. "It will be very well for her to go round with flowers;
but don't let her," he continued seriously--"don't let her imagine
it's more than an innocent amusement. It would be a sort of hideous
mockery of the good we ought to do one another if there were
supposed to be anything more than a kindly thoughtfulness expressed
in such a thing."

"Oh, if Sibyl doesn't feel that it's real, for the time being she
won't care anything about it. She likes to lose herself in the
illusion, she says."

"Well!" said Sewell with a slight shrug, "then we must let her get
what good she can out of it as an exercise of the sensibilities."

"O my dear!" exclaimed his wife, "You _don't_ mean anything so
abominable as that! I've heard you say that the worst thing about
fiction and the theatre was that they brought emotions into play
that ought to be sacred to real occasions."

"Did I say that? Well, I must have been right. I--"

Barker made a scuffling sound with his boots under the table, and
rose to his feet. "I guess," he said, "I shall have to be going."