“I didn’t know, you see; I didn’t understand it all. I thought you would regret it—that you were making a mistake,” he tried to say cheerfully.
“What right has anybody—what right had you to prevent me from ending my life? I don’t want to live! I am tired of life and of misery. I want to know what right any one has to interfere—to make me live a life that doesn’t concern them and only brings me misery?” she cried, indignantly.
“Come now, don’t be so cast down.” At this burst of anger Richard was himself again. “Tell me all about it; maybe I can help you. Have things gone wrong?”
“Have they ever gone right? Don’t preach to me. It’s easy to preach to people who have friends and money and home. Save your sermons for them. I have nothing! I am all alone in this great big heartless world. I haven’t a cent, a home or a friend, and I’m tired of it all. There is no use in talking to me. Some people get it all, and the others get nothing. I am one of the unlucky ones, and the only thing for me to do is to die.”
“Why, my good girl, there is surely something better for you than death.”
“There is nothing but trouble and hunger, and sometimes work. Do you call that better than death?” she cried despondently.
What a story her few words contained! But Richard, happy, careless, fortunate, little understood their real import.
He knew the girl was very much depressed and morbid, so he concluded it might have a beneficial effect if he could induce her to relate her woes to him.
How mountainous our troubles grow when we brood over them.
How they dwindle into little ant-heaps when we relate them to another.