"Why should you be exasperated about other people's affairs?" he said.
"And why interfere at all?"
"Being interested is not the same as being interfering," she replied quickly.
"It is difficult to be the one without being the other," he said. "It requires a genius. There is a genius for being sympathetic as well as a genius for being good. And geniuses are few."
"But I knew one," Bernardine said. "There was a friend to whom in the first days of my trouble I turned for sympathy. When others only irritated, she could soothe. She had only to come into my room, and all was well with me."
There were tears in Bernardine's eyes as she spoke.
"Well," said the Disagreeable Man kindly, "and where is your genius now?"
"She went away, she and hers," Bernardine said "And that was the end of that chapter!"
"Poor little child," he said, half to himself. "Don't I too know something about the ending of such a chapter?"
But Bernardine did not hear him; she was thinking of her friend. She was thinking, as we all think, that those to whom in our suffering we turn for sympathy, become hallowed beings. Saints they may not be; but for want of a better name, saints they are to us, gracious and lovely presences. The great time Eternity, the great space Death, could not rob them of their saintship; for they were canonized by our bitterest tears.
She was roused from her reverie by the Disagreeable Man, who got up, and pushed his chair noisily under the table.