‘You _are_ a friend, Wilfrid! What a strange condition mine is!--for ever feeling I could do this and that difficult thing, were it to fall in my way, and yet constantly failing in the simplest duties--even to that of common politeness. I behaved like a brute to Home. He’s a fine fellow, and only wants to see a thing to do it. _I_ see it well enough, and don’t do it. Wilfrid, I shall come to a bad end. When it comes, mind I told you so, and blame nobody but myself. I mean what I say. ‘Nonsense, Charley! It’s only that you haven’t active work enough, and get morbid with brooding over the germs of things.’ ‘Oh, Wilfrid, how beautiful a life might be! Just look at that one in the New Testament! Why shouldn’t _I_ be like that? _I_ don’t know why. I feel as if I could. But I’m not, you see--and never shall be. I’m selfish, and ill-tempered, and--’ ‘Charley! Charley! There never was a less selfish or better-tempered fellow in the world.’ ‘Don’t make me believe that, Wilfrid, or I shall hate the world as well as myself. It’s all my hypocrisy makes you think so. Because I am ashamed of what I am, and manage to hide it pretty well, you think me a saint. That is heaping damnation on me.’ ‘Take a pipe, Charley, and shut up. That’s rubbish!’ I said. I doubt much if it was what I ought to have said, but I was alarmed for the consequences of such brooding. ‘I wonder what the world would be like if every one considered himself acting up to his own ideal!’ ‘If he was acting so, then it would do the world no harm that he knew it.’ ‘But his ideal must then be a low one, and that would do himself and everybody the worst kind of harm. The greatest men have always thought the least of themselves.’ ‘Yes, but that was because they _were_ the greatest. A man may think little of himself just for the reason that he _is_ little, and can’t help knowing it.’ ‘Then it’s a mercy he does know it! for most small people think much of themselves.’ ‘But to know it--and to feel all the time you ought to be and could be something very different, and yet never get a step nearer it! That is to be miserable. Still it is a mercy to know it. There is always a last help.’