ny dirty hands. Your turn for 'slumming'
will serve us well, but I know the dangers of it. You'll be coming home
_eploree_, as they say here. I hope you'll grow stronger in that
respect. One has to harden one's heart a little."

"I know it is wiser to do so."

"Of course! It's not only that you are constantly imposed upon; the
indulgence of universal sympathy is incompatible with duty to one's
self--unless you become at once a sister of mercy. One is bound, in
common sense, to close eyes and ears against all but a trifling
fraction of human misery. Why, look, we sit here, and laugh and talk
and enjoy ourselves; yet at this instant what horrors are being enacted
in every part of the world! Men are perishing by every conceivable form
of cruelty and natural anguish. Sailors are gurgling out their life in
sea-storms; soldiers are agonizing on battle-fields; men, women, and
children are being burnt, boiled, hacked, squashed, rent, exploded to
death in every town and almost every village of the globe. Here in
Paris, and over there in London, there is no end to the forms of misery
our knowledge suggests--all suffered while we eat and talk. But to sit
down and think persistently of it would lead to madness in any one of
imagination like yours. We have to say: It doesn't concern us! And no
more it does. We haven't the ordering of the world; we can't alter the
vile course of things. I like to swear over it now and then (especially
when I pass a London hospital), but I soon force myself to think of
something else. You must do the same--even to the swearing, if you
like. There's a tendency in our time to excess of humanitarianism--I
mean a sort of lachrymose habit which really does no good. You
represent it in some degree, I'm afraid--eh? Well, well, you've lived
too much alone--you've got into the way of brooding; the habit of
social life will strengthen you."

"I hope so, Denzil."

"Oh, undoubtedly! One more little drop of wine before the coffee.
Nonsense! You need stimulus; your vitality is low. I shall prescribe
for you henceforth. Merciful heavens! how that French woman does talk!
A hundred words to the minute for the last half hour."

A letter had arrived for him at the hotel in his absence. It was from
Mr. Hornibrook's agent, announcing that the house at Polterham was now
vacated, and that Mr. Quarrier might take possession just as soon as he
chose.

"_That's_ all right!" he exclaimed, after reading it to Lilian. "Now