“Ah, don’t they?” asked Ellen, by this time amused, “And how are you so sure they don’t?”
“I just know. They’re too dog-goned cowardly.”
“Well!” she exclaimed, “that’s a fine thing to be calling people who behave themselves!”
“Then they don’t think of anything bad that they want to do,” he persisted. “You wouldn’t call that being good, would you, Ellen? Pshaw, what’s the credit in that?”
“It’s well for them they don’t think of such things,” she declared. “To hear you, a person would believe you wanted to be tempted.”
“No, I hate it, honestly,” he replied, and she felt that he was trying to speak truly of himself. “I used to say that part of the Lord’s prayer, about ‘lead us not into temptation,’ over twice. I did, for a long time. Because, you see, I’m really tempted—always, every minute.”
He paused after this announcement, which, in spite of his sincerity, had a note of pride, and Ellen broke in, thinking that the moment had come to speak of what was most in her mind.
“Potter, you haven’t been making any more of those pictures, have you?”
She felt him shift quickly to the defensive.
“Yes, I have,” he said. “I’ve finished two more.”