Susie gave her body an impatient twist. She thought it positively indecent to speak of sacred things so early in the morning in cold blood. "What has this drivel to do with your stopping here?" she asked angrily. "It has everything to do with it--my duty towards myself is to be as happy and as good as possible, and my duty towards my neighbour----" "Oh, bother your neighbour and your duty!" cried Susie in exasperation. "--is to help him to be good and happy too." "Him? Her, I hope. Don't forget decency, my dear. A girl has no duties whatever towards male neighbours." "Well, I do mean her," said Anna, looking up and laughing. "So you think that by living here you'll make yourself happy?" "Yes, I do--I do think so. Perhaps I am wrong, and shall find out I'm wrong, but I must try." "You'll leave all your friends and relations and stay in this God-forsaken place where you can't even live like a lady?" "Uncle Joachim said it was my one chance of leading the better life." "Unutterable old fool," said Susie with bitterest contempt. "That money, then, is going to be thrown away on Germans? As though there weren't poor people enough in England, if your ambition is to pose as a benefactress!" "Oh, I don't want to pose as anything--I only want to help unhappy wretches," cried Anna, laying her cheek caressingly on Susie's unwilling hand. "Now don't scold me--forgive me if I'm silly, and be patient with me till I find out that I've made a goose of myself and come creeping back to you and Peter. But I _must_ do it--I _must_ try--I _will_ do what I think is right." "And who are the wretches, pray, who are to be made happy?" "Oh, those I am sorriest for--that no one else helps--the genteel ones, if I can only get at them." "I never heard of genteel wretches," said Susie. Anna laughed again. "I was thinking it all out in the forest this morning," she said, "and it suddenly flashed across me that this big roomy house was never meant not to be used, and that instead of going to see poor people and giving them money in the ordinary way, it would be so much better to let women of the better classes, who have no money, and who are dependent and miserable, come and live with me and share mine, and have everything that I have--exactly the same, with no difference of any sort. There is room for twelve at least, and wouldn't it be beautiful to make twelve people, who had lost all hope and all courage, happy for the rest of their days?"