"I'll go further than that," continued the writer, striking his hand on the table impressively. "In the circumstances as I described them I won't call it falsehood! I agree with whoever it was who said that one lied only when one intentionally deceived a person who had a right to know the truth."
"And suppose," said the clergyman, with sudden earnestness, "the knowledge of the truth would be cruel, painful, harmful even, to the person who had the right to it. What then? Would you still owe it to him, or not?"
"Why, then, of course, I wouldn't tell it," answered the other. "You might call it what you liked. I suppose it would be a passive lie, if you're particular about its front name; but there have been lots of fine ones, actively and passively told, since the world began."
"Fine?" echoed the clergyman thoughtfully. "I wonder!"
"Fitting, proper, expedient," amended the writer impatiently.
"Fitting, proper, expedient," repeated the clergyman—"even when the result appeared to justify it. I—wonder!"
He sank into a reverie so profound that the younger man had to call his attention to the fact that food was being offered to him; and then he helped himself mechanically, as if his mind had drifted too far to be immediately recalled to material things.
"I wonder!" he said again vaguely, his eyes, sad and thoughtful, fixed upon distance.
"I was once, you see," he went on, making a sudden effort and looking his companion in the face with a directness that was almost disconcerting. "I was once involved in a case where such a lie had been told, and I—well, I am inclined, if you have no objections, to tell you the whole story and let you judge.
"Some years ago I broke down from over-work and worry, and was ordered away for my health. I chose to travel about my own country, and at a hotel in a certain place where many people go to recover from imaginary ailments I met a man who was being slowly crippled forever by a real and incurable one. His place at the table was next to mine, and every day he was brought in, in his wheeled chair, from the sunniest corner of the piazza, fed neatly and expeditiously by his manservant (his own hands were almost useless), and fetched away again. During the meal when I first sat beside him we entered into conversation, and I found him so cultivated, charming, and humorous a companion that for the rest of my stay I neglected no opportunity of indulging myself in his society."