Ernest did not see Pryer on the day of his conversation with Mr Shaw, but
he did so next morning and found him in a good temper, which of late he
had rarely been. Sometimes, indeed, he had behaved to Ernest in a way
which did not bode well for the harmony with which the College of
Spiritual Pathology would work when it had once been founded. It almost
seemed as though he were trying to get a complete moral ascendency over
him, so as to make him a creature of his own.
He did not think it possible that he could go too far, and indeed, when I
reflect upon my hero's folly and inexperience, there is much to be said
in excuse for the conclusion which Pryer came to.
As a matter of fact, however, it was not so. Ernest's faith in Pryer had
been too great to be shaken down all in a moment, but it had been
weakened lately more than once. Ernest had fought hard against allowing
himself to see this, nevertheless any third person who knew the pair
would have been able to see that the connection between the two might end
at any moment, for when the time for one of Ernest's snipe-like changes
of flight came, he was quick in making it; the time, however, was not yet
come, and the intimacy between the two was apparently all that it had
ever been.
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