“I think I owe it to myself to tell you that I went to Middleton to-day and apologized.”
“Of course; I knew you’d do that, sooner or later,” returned the play-boy, with his best impish grin. “That is what you get for having a conscience. What did he say?”
“He was very decent about it; doesn’t seem to bear malice. Shook hands with me when I got up to go and said he couldn’t blame me so very much for ‘losing my temper.’ Altogether, he made me feel like a fool—or rather like a whited sepulchre.”
“Why the simile?” queried the magazine reader.
“Because I profess better things, and he doesn’t. He is a hopeless pagan, but he shows a better Christian spirit than I did.”
This time Bromley’s grin was good-naturedly cynical.
“Deep down in your heart, Philip, you don’t really believe any such thing as that; you know you don’t,” he said accusingly.
“Why don’t I?”
“Because, at this very moment, the old self-righteous Puritan in you is patting itself on the back for its superior virtue and for the humility in which you kept the letter of the Gospel to your own satisfaction and comfort.”
“Oh, to the devil with you and your hair-splitting philosophy!” said Philip impatiently; and, relighting his pipe, he went on with his reading of the Howells novel.