"And you think restitution should be made them, no doubt, eh?"
"I do."
"At any cost?"
The questioner showed a faint, unpleasant smile, that stirred something like opposition in the breast of the apothecary.
"Yes," he answered.
The next question had a tincture even of fierceness:
"You think it right to sink fifty or a hundred people into poverty to lift one or two out?"
"Mr. Grandissime," said Frowenfeld, slowly, "you bade me study this community."
"I adv--yes; what is it you find?"
"I find--it may be the same with other communities, I suppose it is, more or less--that just upon the culmination of the moral issue it turns and asks the question which is behind it, instead of the question which is before it."