The other--well, it's beneath criticism
but it hurts."
She laughed whole-heartedly.
"Andrew," she said, "for the first time in my life I am ashamed of you.
Here am I, hidebound in conventions, and I could just summon indignation
enough to send the paper down to the kitchen to be burnt. Since then I
have not even thought of it. I was far more angry that any one should
anticipate the troubles which you have to face. Come and sit down."
She led him to the couch and held his fingers in hers as she leaned back
in a corner.
"I honestly believe," she went on gently, "that the world is not
sufficiently grateful to those who toil for her. Criticism has become a
habit of life. Nobody believes or wants to believe in the altruist any
longer. I believe that if to-day a rich man stripped himself of all his
possessions and obeyed the doctrines of the Bible by giving them to the
poor, the Daily something or other would worry around until they found
some interested motive, and the Daily something or other else would
succeed in proving the man a hypocrite."
He smiled and in the lightening of his face she appreciated for the
first time a certain strained look about his eyes and the drawn look
about the mouth.
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