"Both," she returned, laughing. "You insisted that I should sing, at sight, a song already dear to you, and I declined to spoil the music, and wreck my musical reputation with a stranger, from whose mind I might never have an opportunity of removing the unfortunate opinion."
"In contrariety to these considerations, were the wish to oblige me, and a dislike to wound the feelings of your friend, Miss Josephine, and this scale kicked the beam?" said Mr. Lacy, interrogatively.
"No; Josephine was out of the question; she did not expect me to comply. We never sing together—or very rarely. My voice is not a contralto, nor does it accord with her's. You will have to be content with my explanation; I speak truth in the smallest matters."
"The false in trifles are seldom reliable in things of greater moment," replied the other. "There is less deliberate, malicious falsehood in the world than we suppose. Men are oftener liars from habit, than from necessity or temptation."
"But to this habit there must be a beginning. Is there no sin in the earliest deviation from the right way?"
"I did not say that there is not sin in every violation of truth. Each one is a stain upon the soul—blots, that too frequently deface it forever; but I do not subscribe to the casuistry that gauges the guilt of a lie entirely by its effects upon others—which smiles upon, as a harmless simpleton, him who 'fibs' or 'yarns' or 'embroiders' in cowardice or vanity, and empties the vials of wrath upon the Pariah, who seeks, by one heaven-daring falsehood, to save what he holds most dear. One destroys the mirror by gradually damaging its bright surface, the other shivers it at one reckless blow."
"This has often struck me," said Ida. "It appears to me that the slower process deadens the conscience most surely, and the insensibility of those who practice it, betrays a more diseased state of the moral system than the pangs of remorse."
"Undoubtedly; and this should make us doubly watchful against any infringement of veracity. The straightest, the only safe road is 'the truth—the whole truth—and nothing but the truth.'"
"And who adheres to this rule?" asked Ida. "How much truth, do you imagine, is being uttered now in these rooms?"