?"

"For a while it was rather fun to think up things to do to the person,
and then it got to be disagreeable, and feverish, like a cut that's
festered, and then I made a strong effort, and found that hating was
very poor company and led nowhere."

"Exactly," said the beggar. "Do you mind if I talk frankly? My hatred
for your father persisted a great many years, until I found that going
to bed with it every night and getting up with it every morning was a
slow poison that was affecting all the rest of me--my power to think out
a line of action, my power to stick to it, even my power to like people
that were good to me and faithful to my interests. I found that I was
beginning to hate everybody and everything in the world and the world
itself. Meanwhile, Miss Barbara, I did things that can never be undone."

He was silent, and appeared to be turning over the leaves in the books
of his memory. Suddenly he spoke again.

"And it was all so silly," he said, "so futile. The cure was in my head
all the time--just longing to be used. And fool that I was, I
didn't know it."

"What was the cure?"

"It was the sovereign cure for all our troubles, Miss Barbara--reason,
and crowds. Stand morning or evening at the entrance to the Brooklyn
Bridge--stand there with your trouble, and consider that among the
passers, better carried than yours, are troubles, far, far greater than
yours, more poignant, lives lived in dungeons deeper and more dark. Your
father has lived a life of most admirable utility: should he be hated
for one mistake? Suppose that it had been some other small boy's legs
that he wasted, instead of mine? Would I hate him for it? Why, no. I'd
say it's too bad. But since it was I that lost the legs I lost all sense
of proportion and justice and was a long time--a long time coming
back to it."

"May I know what brought you round?"

The beggar felt that he might dare a little. He smiled. "Of course. What
brought me around was the discovery that he had created something far,
far more important than what he had destroyed. At first I thought you
were like so many other girls of your class--well dressed, and good to
look at. Then that you had a very genuine talent, and were going to
count in the world. Then, and this is best, it came over me that you
were one girl in a million--that you would do whatever seemed right to
you, not without fear of criticism, and pain and sacrifice, but
regardless of them. And so, you see,