whisper.

"Well, I'm sorry for his folks, but he'd ought to be strung up," said
the man. "Why in thunder don't he go to work. I guess if he was
coughin' as bad as I be at night, an' had to work, he might know a
little something about it. I ain't in debt, though, not a dollar."

Chapter XXIII

When a strong normal character which has consciously made wrong
moves, averse to the established order of things, and so become a
force of negation, comes into contact with weaker or undeveloped
natures, it sometimes produces in them an actual change of moral
fibre, and they become abnormal. Instead of a right quantity on the
wrong track, they are a wrong quantity, and exactly in accordance
with their environments. In the case of the Carroll family, Arthur
Carroll, who was in himself of a perfect and unassailable balance as
to the right estimate of things, and the weighing of cause and
effect, who had never in his whole life taken a step blindfold by any
imperfection of spiritual vision, who had never for his own solace
lost his own sense of responsibility for his lapses, had made his
family, in a great measure, irresponsible for the same faults. Except
in the possible case of Charlotte, all of them had a certain measure
of perverted moral sense in the direction in which Carroll had
consciously and unpervertedly failed. Anna Carroll, it is true, had
her eyes more or less open, and she had much strength of character;
still it was a feminine strength, and even she did not look at
affairs as she might have done had she not been under the influence
of her brother for years. While she at times waxed bitter over the
state of affairs, it was more because of the constant irritation to
her own pride, and her impatience at the restraints of an alien and
dishonest existence, than from any moral scruples. Even Charlotte
herself was scarcely clear-visioned concerning the family taint. The
word debt had not to her its full meaning; the inalienable rights of
others faded her comprehension when measured beside her own right of
existence and of the comforts and delights of existence. Even to her
a new hat or a comfortable meal was something of more importance than
the need of the vender thereof for reimbursement. The value to
herself was the first value, her birthright, indeed, which if others
held they must needs yield up to her without money and without price,
if her purse happened to be empty. Her compunction and sudden
awakening of re