ill gave to starving
orphans across the world. After all, what was there to choose between
the near-sighted and the far-sighted social vision? How narrow they both
appeared and how crooked! Darrow would let all the children of Europe
starve as long as their crying did not interfere with the aims of his
Federation of Labour; Stephen's sister Julia, with her instinct for
imitation and her remote sense of responsibility, would step over the
poverty at her door, while she held out her hands, in the latest
fashionable gesture of philanthropy, to the orphans in France or Vienna.
And beside them both his mother, who because of her constitutional
inability to see anything beyond the family, perceived merely the fact
that her own child would be disappointed if the tableaux for the benefit
of starving children somewhere did not go off well. The question, he
realized, was not which one of the three points of view was the most
admirable, but simply which one served best the ultimate purpose of the
race. Selfishness seemed to have as little as altruism to do with the
problem. Was Corinna, who had failed in philanthropy and chosen beauty,
the only wise one among them?

"But children are living in these houses," he said, "and not only
living--they are forced to move out because the rent has become so high
that they must find a worse place. I've just seen it with my own eyes.
Three sickly little children and a dreadful baby--a baby that knows
everything already."

A quiver of pain crossed Mr. Culpeper's handsome features; but he said
only, "I will speak to the agent."

"Won't you look into it yourself?" asked Stephen hopelessly. "The agent
is only the agent--but the responsibility is yours--ours. Of course the
agent doesn't want to make expensive repairs when he can get as high
rent without doing so. He knows that people are obliged to have a roof
over them; and if the roofs are too bad for white people, he can always
find negroes to pay anything that he asks. Can't you see what it is in
reality--that we are preying on the helpless?"

Turning suddenly from the mirror, Mrs. Culpeper crossed the floor
hastily and put her arms about her son's shoulders. Her face was very
motherly and there was a compassionate light in her eyes, "My dear, dear
boy," she murmured in the soothing tone that one uses to the ill or the
mentally unbalanced. "My dear boy, you must really go and dress. Julia
will never forgive us." In her heart she was sincere