“Quite so,” said the guest.
The host had a “carrying voice”; it “carried” into the room where the secretary sat.
He had finished the letters; he was sorting and arranging the MS. of the world-compelling pamphlet, before proceeding to type it. The writer was a religiously-disposed man and a church-goer; he liked to preface his pamphlets with a motto, generally a text. This one was a text; it ran: “Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you.”
He was an excellent man; but he never stopped to think whether he was in the habit of making a catalogue of his past offences to his listening friends and new acquaintances or whether he would like to know that they did so on his behalf.
There was once a converted heathen who was much cleverer than those who converted him. He told the bishop of the diocese that he and his fellow-converts were in the habit of gathering together to make public confession of their sins.
“An excellent discipline, doubtless,” said the good bishop, “but such public confession must be painful.”
“By no means,” said the simple penitent. “Because we do not confess our own sins, but each others’.”
The bishop mused on the childlike simplicity of the convert; but—was the former heathen as guileless as he sounded?
The secretary heard the words of his employer; his hands began to shake. Presently he dropped the MS. and sat staring out of the window. It was seven years since he had “paid the penalty,” seven solid years of dull drudgery and loneliness, and they were still discussing it, and his “fresh start.”
He sighed; picked up his pencil (he was numbering chaotic scraps of a very badly written MS.), let it slide to the carpet, rested his arms on the table, and his head on his arms, and sighed, and sighed, and sighed again; a sigh sadder than a sob, because it spoke of a greater weariness, and a more utter depression and spiritlessness.