“And you really don’t care for any one,” said Mrs. Hardy. “You must excuse my curiosity; but I never saw man, woman, or child like you.”
“I must care for myself,” said Eugene solemnly.
“I know what is the matter with you,” said Mrs. Hardy triumphantly. “It’s just the trouble your great emperor suffered from. He hadn’t much faith in human nature, and he despised women.”
“The great emperor was but a man,” said Eugene stiffly.
“He was concentrated selfishness,” said Mrs. Hardy. “I am selfish, my husband is, everybody is; but Napoleon was worse than we are. But why do you cry?” for the tears were still rolling down Eugene’s cheeks in a slow and sober procession.
He dabbed at his face with his handkerchief. “I will tell you,” he said earnestly. “Since you have been speaking, I have been looking out that window toward the park where your homeless cats live. I did not comprehend about them the other day; now my soul enters the cats’ bodies, as we might say, and I feel the dismay that must fill them when they have lost their homes and their protectors. It is horrible. One becomes filled with anguish and bewilderment. Where shall one turn?”
“Do you know what that feeling is that makes you, as you suppose, cry for the cats?” asked Mrs. Hardy with great gentleness.
While Eugene paused to frame a reply, she went on, “It is sympathy. You are beginning to understand, and you are on the high road that leads away from selfishness. Usually we begin with the human family and descend to the animals. You are going backward. Your pity for the cats makes you see in them something more than mere hairy creatures crawling over the ground, as you styled them the other day.”