He laughed bitterly.
"That we see every moment of the time we spend down amongst them," he answered. "I have seen worse things. I have seen the sapping away of character—men become thieves and women worse—to escape from starvation. That, I think, is the greatest tragedy of all. It makes one shudder when one thinks that on the shoulders of many people some portion of the responsibility at any rate for these things must rest."
Her lips quivered. She emptied the contents of a gold chain purse into her hands.
"It is we who are wicked, Mr. Brooks," she said, "who spend no end of money and close our ears to all this. Do take this, will you; can it go to some of the women you know, and the children? There are only five or six pounds there, but I shall talk to mamma. We will send you a cheque."
He took the money without hesitation.
"I am very glad," he said, earnestly, "that you have given me this, that you have felt that you wanted to give it me. I hope you won't think too badly of me for coming over here to help you spend a pleasant evening, and talking at all of such miserable things."
"Badly!" she repeated. "No; I shall never be able to thank you enough for telling me what you have done. It makes one feel almost wicked to be sitting here, and wearing jewelry, and feeling well off, spending money on whatever you want, and to think that there are people starving. How they must hate us."
"It is the wonderful part of it," he answered. "I do not believe that they do. I suppose it is a sort of fatalism—the same sort of thing, only much less ignoble, as the indifference which keeps our rich people contented and deaf to this terribly human cry."
"You are young," she said, looking at him, "to be so much interested in such serious things."
"It is my blood, I suppose," he answered. "My father was a police-court missionary, and my mother the matron of a pauper hospital."