“That I must tell—that I am to tell the people what I did. And they will never, never forgive me, and I cannot tell—I cannot tell, Mr. Pryor.”
“Then, my dear Nancy, why did you come to see me?”
“Because I thought perhaps you would find the middle way.”
“The middle way, Nancy?”
“The way between the very naughty and the very good. There must be a middle way, and I want to get into it and to keep in it. Cannot you find it for me?”
“I have never heard of it, Nancy—never. I am afraid there is no middle way. You have done, I take it, something wrong; and you have, I take it, told a lie about it.”
“That is it.”
“And one lie, as is invariably the case, has led to another, and to another, and to another.”
“Oh yes, Mr. Pryor, that is certainly it.”
“And each lie makes your poor little heart feet more sad, and each lie shuts out more and more of the beautiful sunshine of God’s love from your spirit. Nancy, there is no middle way. You must go on telling those lies, and adding to the misery of your life, and getting lower and lower and your heart harder and harder, until after a time that happens which”——