Annie broke into a laugh at herself: “Of course. But don't you think that a man who is able to put things as he does--who can make you see, for example, the stupidity and cruelty of things that always seemed right and proper before--don't you think that he's guilty of a kind of hypocrisy if he doesn't _feel_ as well as see?” “No, I can't say that I do,” said the doctor, with pleasure in the feminine excess of her demand. “And there are so many ways of feeling. We're apt to think that our own way is the only way, of course; but I suppose that most philanthropists--men who have done the most to better conditions--have been people of cold temperaments; and yet you can't say they are unfeeling.” “No, certainly. Do you think Mr. Peck is a real philanthropist?” “How you do get back to the personal always!” said Dr. Morrell. “What makes you ask?” “Because I can't understand his indifference to his child. It seems to me that real philanthropy would begin at home. But twice he has distinctly forgotten her existence, and he always seems bored with it. Or not that quite; but she seems no more to him than any other child.” “There's something very curious about all that,” said the doctor. “In most things the greater includes the less, but in philanthropy it seems to exclude it. If a man's heart is open to the whole world, to all men, it's shut sometimes against the individual, even the nearest and dearest. You see I'm willing to admit all you can say against a rival practitioner.” “Oh, I understand,” said Annie. “But I'm not going to gratify your spite.” At the same time she tacitly consented to the slight for Mr. Peck which their joking about him involved. In such cases we excuse our disloyalty as merely temporary, and intend to turn serious again and make full amends for it. “He made very short work,” she continued, “of that notion of yours that there could be any good feeling between the poor and the rich who had once been poor themselves.” “Did I have any such notion as that?” She recalled the time and place of its expression to him, and he said, “Oh yes! Well?” “He says that rich people like that are apt to be the hardest masters, and are eager to forget they ever were poor, and are only anxious to identify themselves with the rich.” Dr. Morrell seemed to enjoy this immensely. “That does rather settle it,” he said recreantly. She tried to be severe with him, but she only kept on laughing and joking; she was aware that he was luring her away from her seriousness. Mrs. Bolton brought in the lamp, and set it on the library table, showing her gaunt outline a moment against it before she left it to throw its softened light into the parlour where they sat. The autumn moonshine, almost as mellow, fell in through the open windows, which let in the shrilling of the crickets and grasshoppers, and wafts of the warm night wind.