on; and she had therefore resigned herself to serving as a
kind of outlet for Bessy's pent-up discontent. It was not that her
friend's grievance appealed to her personal sympathies; she had learned
enough of the situation to give her moral assent unreservedly to the
other side. But it was characteristic of Justine that where she
sympathized least she sometimes pitied most. Like all quick spirits she
was often intolerant of dulness; yet when the intolerance passed it left
a residue of compassion for the very incapacity at which she chafed. It
seemed to her that the tragic crises in wedded life usually turned on
the stupidity of one of the two concerned; and of the two victims of
such a catastrophe she felt most for the one whose limitations had
probably brought it about. After all, there could be no imprisonment as
cruel as that of being bounded by a hard small nature. Not to be
penetrable at all points to the shifting lights, the wandering music of
the world--she could imagine no physical disability as cramping as that.
How the little parched soul, in solitary confinement for life, must pine
and dwindle in its blind cranny of self-love!

To be one's self wide open to the currents of life does not always
contribute to an understanding of narrower natures; but in Justine the
personal emotions were enriched and deepened by a sense of participation
in all that the world about her was doing, suffering and enjoying; and
this sense found expression in the instinct of ministry and solace. She
was by nature a redresser, a restorer; and in her work, as she had once
told Amherst, the longing to help and direct, to hasten on by personal
intervention time's slow and clumsy processes, had often been in
conflict with the restrictions imposed by her profession. But she had no
idle desire to probe the depths of other lives; and where there seemed
no hope of serving she shrank from fruitless confidences. She was
beginning to feel this to be the case with Bessy Amherst. To touch the
rock was not enough, if there were but a few drops within it; yet in
this barrenness lay the pathos of the situation--and after all, may not
the scanty spring be fed from a fuller current?

"I'm not sure about that," she said, answering her friend's last words
after a deep pause of deliberation. "I mean about its being so pleasant
to be found interesting. I'm sure the passive part is always the dull
one: life has been a great deal more thrilling since we found