“I blame myself for trying to excuse my own failure on the plea that things generally have gone wrong. At times it seems to me that I'm responsible for having lost my faith in what I used to think was the right thing to do; and then again it seems as if the world were all so bad that no real good could be done in the old way, and that my faith is gone because there's nothing for it to rest on any longer. I feel that something must be done; but I don't know what.”
“It would be hard to say,” said the doctor.
She perceived that her exaltation amused him, but she was too much in earnest to care. “Then we are guilty—all guilty—till we find out and begin to do it. If the world has come to such a pass that you can't do anything but harm in it—”
“Oh, is it so bad as that?” he protested.
“It's quite as bad,” she insisted. “Just see what mischief I've done since I came back to Hatboro'. I took hold of that miserable Social Union because I was outside of all the life about me, and it seemed my only chance of getting into it; and I've done more harm by it in one summer than I could undo in a lifetime. Just think of poor Mr. Brandreth's love affair with Miss Chapley broken off, and Lyra's lamentable triumph over Miss Northwick, and Mrs. Munger's duplicity, and Ralph's escapade—all because I wanted to do good!”
A note of exaggeration had begun to prevail in her self-upbraiding, which was real enough, and the time came for him to suggest, “I think you're a little morbid, Miss Kilburn.”
“Morbid! Of course I am! But that doesn't alter the fact that everything is wrong, does it?”
“Everything!”
“Why, you don't pretend yourself, do you, that everything is right?”
“A true American ought to do so, oughtn't he?” teased the doctor. “One mustn't be a bad citizen.”