"
After this, I smiled with a faintly malicious sense of satisfaction at
Mr. Rollin's confusion, though I felt that I had been cut to the heart.
"And when I spoke about having found out about your past life," he went
on, struggling desperately with his lost cause; "I did not mean that
there was anything bad, you know; only that you sought pleasant
diversions in common with the rest of humanity, and enjoyed the
Heaven-born instinct of knowing how to have a good time, and weren't
always the ambitious recluse and religious devotee that you choose to be
just at present; though I've sometimes wished that I could turn saint so
all of a sudden, but I couldn't," added the fisherman, despondently; "if
I should go to the ends of the earth in that capacity, nobody'd take any
stock in me, whatever; and, after all, what does it amount to?
"This isn't what I meant to say, any of it;" he sighed angrily. "It's
just what I meant _not_ to say--confound it! You've done gloriously;
you've played the thing through to perfection; you've made an inimitable
success of it; but Wallencamp doesn't offer scope wide enough for your
powers. I offer you a field hitherto untilled, left to the wandering
winds and the birds of the air, extensive enough in its forlorn iniquity,
I assure you, to engage your patient and continued efforts.
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