“You must keep from them if you are ever to be all you were, all you promised to be.”
Lester shook his head.
“It will never be, Philip. It is too late—I am done for.”
“That's absurd, Lester. There! I can tolerate any one except the man who differs from me in his opinions. For him I have the heartiest contempt.”
“It's not all cowardice with me,” Lester said miserably. “Now that the time has gone forever, I want what I have never had. I am desperately sick of myself.”
He looked at Philip wistfully, and the remembrance was torture to Philip long afterward. “Did you ever want to be good? Can you imagine what this desire is in a fellow like me?”
“Why do you stir me up on these lines of sloppy sentiment?” Philip retorted. “No, I never want to be good. My digestion is perfect. Piety does very well for children and invalids.”
Lester made no response to this and his friend added in an injured but more temperate tone: “You talk like a man on his death-bed. I can only give you temporal consolation. I can only tell you what seems to me the wisest course to pursue.”
“Perhaps I am nearer that than you think for—nearer my death-bed,” the boy answered, helplessly, drearily.
“Stuff!” Philip cried hotly.