For a moment they were both serious and silent. Then she said: “Sometimes I think the fault is all in myself, and that if I were not so sophisticated and—and—selfish, I should find the old way of doing good just as effective and natural as ever. Then again, I think the conditions are all wrong, and that we ought to be fairer to people, and then we needn't be so good to them. I should prefer that. I hate being good to people I don't like, and I can't like people who don't interest me. I think I must be very hard-hearted.”
The doctor laughed at this.
“Oh, I know,” said Annie, “I know the fraudulent reputation I've got for good works.”
“Your charity to tramps is the opprobrium of Hatboro',” the doctor consented.
“Oh, I don't mind that. It's easy when people ask you for food or money, but the horrible thing is when they ask you for work. Think of me, who never did anything to earn a cent in my life, being humbly asked by a fellow-creature to let him work for something to eat and drink! It's hideous! It's abominable! At first I used to be flattered by it, and try to conjure up something for them to do, and to believe that I was helping the deserving poor. Now I give all of them money, and tell them that they needn't even pretend to work for it. I don't work for my money, and I don't see why they should.”
“They'd find that an unanswerable argument if you put it to them,” said the doctor. He reached out his hand for the paper-cutter, and then withdrew it in a way that made her laugh.
“But the worst of it is,” she resumed, “that I don't love any of the people that I help, or hurt, whichever it is. I did feel remorseful toward Mrs. Savor for a while, but I didn't love her, and I knew that I only pitied myself through her. Don't you see?”
“No, I don't,” said the doctor.
“You don't, because you're too polite. The only kind of creature that I can have any sympathy with is some little wretch like Idella, who is perfectly selfish and naughty every way, but seems to want me to like her, and a reprobate like Lyra, or some broken creature like poor Ralph. I think there's something in the air, the atmosphere, that won't allow you to live in the old way if you've got a grain of conscience or humanity. I don't mean that I have. But it seems to me as if the world couldn't go on as it has been doing. Even here in America, where I used to think we had the millennium because slavery was abolished, people have more liberty, but they seem just as far off as ever from justice. That is what paralyses me and mocks me and laughs in my face when I remember how I used to dream of doing good after I came home. I had better stayed at Rome.”
The doctor said vaguely, “I'm glad you didn't,” and he let his eyes dwell on her with a return of the professional interest which she was too lost in her self reproach to be able to resent.