"When are you going back?"
"In a week. It will all be ready in a week. He'll know who did it. Curse him!"
"My dear Doctor, aren't you a little——"
"Are you like that, too?" burst out Roberts. "Have none of you any sincerity? Is it sham with all of you? You laugh as if it were a joke."
"I can't be angry with old Dale. I expect he'll only laugh himself, you know. It will be good fun."
Roberts looked at him in hopeless wrath. It seemed to him that these men, who wrote the words and proclaimed the truths which had turned his life and reformed his soul, were themselves but playing with what they taught. Were they only actors—or amusing themselves?
"You are as bad as he is," he said angrily, and stalked out of the room.
Arthur, puzzled with his unmanageable guest, went down, as he often did, to his neighbors, and laid the whole case before Mrs. Hodge and Nellie Fane. He found them both in, Nellie having just returned from an afternoon concert where she had been singing.
"I believe the fellow's half mad, you know," said Arthur.