"
Pryer's manner was strange throughout the conversation, as though he were
thinking all the time of something else. His eyes wandered curiously
over Ernest, as Ernest had often noticed them wander before: the words
were about Church discipline, but somehow or other the discipline part of
the story had a knack of dropping out after having been again and again
emphatically declared to apply to the laity and not to the clergy: once
indeed Pryer had pettishly exclaimed: "Oh, bother the College of
Spiritual Pathology." As regards the clergy, glimpses of a pretty large
cloven hoof kept peeping out from under the saintly robe of Pryer's
conversation, to the effect, that so long as they were theoretically
perfect, practical peccadilloes--or even peccadaccios, if there is such a
word, were of less importance. He was restless, as though wanting to
approach a subject which he did not quite venture to touch upon, and kept
harping (he did this about every third day) on the wretched lack of
definition concerning the limits of vice and virtue, and the way in which
half the vices wanted regulating rather than prohibiting. He dwelt also
on the advantages of complete unreserve, and hinted that there were
mysteries into which Ernest had not yet been initiated, but which would
enlighten him when he got to know them, as he would be allowed to do when
his friends saw that he was strong enough.
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