"How am I to answer you?"
"Just the truth."
"If you will have an answer, I do not consider him an honest man. All this story about your brother is true or is not true. In neither case can one look upon him as honest."
"Just so."
"But I think that he has within him a capacity for love, and an unselfishness, which almost atones for his dishonesty; and there is about him a strange dislike to conventionality and to law which is so interesting as to make up the balance. I have always regarded your father as a most excellent man, but thoroughly dishonest. He would rob any one,—but always to eke out his own gifts to other people. He has, therefore, to my eyes been most romantic."
"And as to his health?"
"Ah, as to that I cannot answer so decidedly. He will do nothing because I tell him."
"Do you mean that you could prolong his life?"
"Certainly I think that I could. He has exerted himself this morning, whereas I have advised him not to exert himself. He could have given himself the same counsel, and would certainly live longer by obeying it than the reverse. As there is no difficulty in the matter, there need be no conceit on my part in saying that so far my advice might be of service to him."
"How long will he live?"