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 it’s hateful.”

“I cannot agree with you.”

“Do you like having a lot of yourself?”

“No; I like yourself.”

She laughed a little; in her heart she was pleased, but she only said, “I don’t; I know what it really is.”

“And I do not?”

“No,” she answered; then, with a sudden determination to tell him the worst, and to deal in this newly admired honesty, she said, “I will tell you, though.  You remember my father?  You may have politely forgotten him, or smoothed out your recollections of him—­remember him now; he is just about what you thought him.”

“Indeed?” the tone was that one of polite interest, which she had come to know so well.  “Your shoe is unfastened; may I tie it for you?  The question is,” he went on, as he stooped to her shoe, “what did I think of your father?  I’m sure I don’t know, and I hardly think you are in a position to, either.”

She moved impatiently, so that the shoelace slipped out of his hand, and he had to begin all over again.  It was a very shabby shoe; at another time she might have minded about it, and even refused to have it fastened on that account; to-night she did not care, which was perhaps as well, for Rawson-Clew knew long ago all about the shabbiness—­the only thing he did not know before was the good shape of the foot inside.

“I know perfectly well what you thought my father,” she said; “if you have forgotten, I will remind you.  You did not think him an adventurer, I know; of course, you saw he had not brains enough.”