I leaned back in my chair, powerless. It was becoming evident to me that no one could solve Janet’s problems for her.
“It would be cowardly,” she said. “Because I am unhappy, should I try to work off my ill-humour upon the poor?”
“They might like to look at you,” I suggested.
She was making tea, and she stopped, holding a dainty cup in her right hand, to look up at me. That face, whose expression changed so often, baffled and fascinated me. The mouth curved often into cynical smiles, but the eyes were the eyes of a dreamer. At times Janet seemed to me a child. At times she bore the weary expression of one who has fought many battles and has won but few.
“No,” she said. “I am one of the people whose agnosticism absolves them from all action. You know the type. We find it difficult to get up in the morning or to button our boots because we cannot comprehend the infinite. Really, agnosticism makes a very soft down cushion on which to recline at one’s ease.”
“Don’t you sometimes get tired of thrusting arrows into yourself?” I asked. “It must be hard to be a St. Sebastian where you have to be persecutor and martyr too.”
“Please don’t make epigrams,” said the girl. “It is a sign of degeneracy. I am sorry to see you beginning to show traces of it.”
“I thought perhaps you would not understand me if I did not try to speak in epigrams,” I answered meekly.
Janet rose from her chair and came over to stand at my side, brushing back, with kindly fingers, a lock of hair that had escaped from under my bonnet.
“But to go back to the question of good works,” she said. “It seems to me that it is useless to try anything. Listen. When I was twelve years old I wanted to do some work for the city charity organization.