d so much rather keep you
here. I feel much less lonely when you're with me. But you say you won't
stay--and it's too dreadful to think of your going back to that dreary
hospital."

"But you know the hospital's not dreary to me," Justine interposed;
"it's the most interesting place I've ever known."

Mrs. Amherst smiled indulgently on this extravagance. "A great many
people go through the craze for philanthropy--" she began in the tone of
mature experience; but Justine interrupted her with a laugh.

"Philanthropy? I'm not philanthropic. I don't think I ever felt inclined
to do good in the abstract--any more than to do ill! I can't remember
that I ever planned out a course of conduct in my life. It's only," she
went on, with a puzzled frown, as if honestly trying to analyze her
motives, "it's only that I'm so fatally interested in people that before
I know it I've slipped into their skins; and then, of course, if
anything goes wrong with them, it's just as if it had gone wrong with
me; and I can't help trying to rescue myself from _their_ troubles! I
suppose it's what you'd call meddling--and so should I, if I could only
remember that the other people were not myself!"

Bessy received this with the mild tolerance of superior wisdom. Once
safe on the tried ground of traditional authority, she always felt
herself Justine's superior. "That's all very well now--you see the
romantic side of it," she said, as if humouring her friend's vagaries.
"But in time you'll want something else; you'll want a husband and
children--a life of your own. And then you'll have to be more practical.
It's ridiculous to pretend that comfort and money don't make a
difference. And if you married a rich man, just think what a lot of good
you could do! Westy will be very well off--and I'm sure he'd let you
endow hospitals and things. Think how interesting it would be to build a
ward in the very hospital where you'd been a nurse! I read something
like that in a novel the other day--it was beautifully described. All
the nurses and doctors that the heroine had worked with were there to
receive her...and her little boy went about and gave toys to the
crippled children...."

If the speaker's concluding instance hardly produced the effect she had
intended, it was perhaps only because Justine's attention had been
arrested by the earlier part of the argument. It was strange to have
marriage urged on her by a woman who had twice failed to find happiness