Anne presented her case in a veiled form, as a situation in the abstract. She scrupulously refrained from mentioning any names.
The Canon smiled at her precautions. "We are working in the dark," said he. "I think I can help you a little bit more if you'll allow me to come down to the concrete. You are speaking, I fancy, of our poor friend, Mr. Gorst?"
She looked at him helplessly, startled at his penetration and her own betrayal, but appeased by the pitying adjective which brought Gorst into the regions of pardonable discussion.
"You needn't be afraid," he said. "I had to be certain before I could advise you. I can now tell you with confidence that you are doing right. I—know—the—man."
He uttered the phrase with measured emphasis, and closed his teeth upon the last words with a snap. It was impossible to convey a stronger effect of moral reprobation. "But I see your difficulty," he continued. "I understand that he is a rather intimate friend of Miss Majendie."
Anne noticed that he deliberately avoided all mention of her husband.
"She has known him for a very long time."
"Ah yes. And it is your affection, your pity for your sister that makes you hesitate. You do not wish to be hard, and at the same time you wish to do right. Is it not so?"
She murmured her assent. (How well he understood her!)
"Ah, my dear Mrs. Majendie, we have sometimes to be a little hard, in order that we may not be harder. You have thought, perhaps, that you should be tender to this friendship? Now, I am an old man, and I have had a pretty large experience of men and women, and I tell you that such friendships are unwholesome. Unwholesome. Both for the woman and the man."