“You don't, because you're too polite. The only kind of creature that I can have any sympathy with is some little wretch like Idella, who is perfectly selfish and naughty every way, but seems to want me to like her, and a reprobate like Lyra, or some broken creature like poor Ralph. I think there's something in the air, the atmosphere, that won't allow you to live in the old way if you've got a grain of conscience or humanity. I don't mean that _I_ have. But it seems to me as if the world couldn't go on as it has been doing. Even here in America, where I used to think we had the millennium because slavery was abolished, people have more liberty, but they seem just as far off as ever from justice. That is what paralyses me and mocks me and laughs in my face when I remember how I used to dream of doing good after I came home. I had better stayed at Rome.” The doctor said vaguely, “I'm glad you didn't,” and he let his eyes dwell on her with a return of the professional interest which she was too lost in her self reproach to be able to resent. “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.” “But if you _were_ a bad citizen?” she persisted.