ntly. I should think it would get as tiresome to them by and by
as it did to me some years ago."

Claire felt as if she were included in his casual criticism of mankind,
and wondered just how she had been addicted to the practise. A dozen
different instances came to her, and she felt very penitent.

"It's because we're all so thoughtless," she said.

"Perhaps. I rather choose to state it differently. It's for the same
reason that I do thousands of things, because I'm more interested in
myself than I am in any one else. I'm selfish, and so is the rest of
humanity."

"But we aren't deliberately so," Philip protested. "Isn't it rather that
we are short-sighted and unimaginative?"

"It may be. The end is the same. If I am too short-sighted, too
unimaginative to know how a fellow being feels, I can do nothing but
blunder along. He may be hurt by me. I may do him an injustice, I may
even cheat him of his chance at life, but it can't be helped, and again
the result amounts to my being selfish."

As she worked over her biscuit dough, Claire listened to their talk
resentfully. She wished they would keep still, but she said nothing.
They went ahead, demonstrating, she thought bitterly, the truth of
Lawrence's argument.

"I suppose mankind generally does the best it can," Philip said
thoughtfully. "If you ask a man, if you really talk with him, you will
find him kindly, inclined to be generous, and willing to do what he can
for another. I have always found that true."

"So have I, in a way. He is kindly, he is inclined to be generous, and
he is willing to do what he can for another. The trouble is, he makes a
maudlin sentiment of his kindliness, a self-flattering charity of his
generous inclinations, and is unable to do what he can for another
because he is quite sincerely persuaded that he can't do anything."

"My friend, I have had men help me when it cost them trouble to do it.
We all have. Without it, we would none of us accomplish anything of
value."

"I, too, have had them help me, from the lending of money down to
guiding me across a traffic-blurred street, but I have never yet found
more than three or four whose imagination was keen enough and whose
judgment clear enough to give me a square deal at living."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that the same man who will help me across the street, lend me
money, and be a splendid comrade, stops short when he comes to the field
of self-support. He will say sympatheti