'What the gracious one says is but too true.'
'I will enter and speak with my cousin Charlotte.'
Charlotte was, as Gertrud had said, sitting on one of the two beds that nearly filled the room. She was feverishly writing something in pencil on the margin of The Beast of Prey, and looked up with an eager, worried expression when I opened the door. 'Is it not terrible,' she said, 'that one should not be able to do more than one's best, and that one's best is never enough?'
'Why, what's the matter?'
'Oh everything's the matter! You are all dull, indifferent, deadened to everything that is vital. You don't care—you let things slide—and if any one tries to wake you up and tell you the truth you never, never listen.'
'Who—me?' I asked, confused into this sad grammar by her outburst.
She threw the pamphlet down and jumped up, 'Oh, I am sick of all your sins and stupidities!' she cried, pulling her hat straight and sticking violent pins into it.
'Whose—mine?' I asked in great perplexity.
'It would almost seem,' said Charlotte, fixing me with angry eyes,—'it would really almost seem that there is no use whatever in devoting one's life to one's fellow-creatures.'
'Well, one naturally likes to be left alone,' I murmured.