"But there are a good many--" interrupted the gray-haired woman, feebly. "Yes, yes, thank Heaven!" Mary Burne agreed, in the old gentle voice. "For those happy ones who have found, or think they have found, a chance of doing some service, or to those who for any reason find the world or themselves an interesting and compensating study, there are only congratulations, and a plea for fairer judgment of less fortunate, maybe not less sane or noble, men." "Like ze poor Jean Latreille," lamented the Frenchman behind the door. "No work; only me for friend." "Yes, yes," assented Mary Burne, as if she knew the story, and others to cap it. "No one who is in sympathetic touch with his kind can honestly affirm that every man and woman has something worth living for, and can, if he and she choose, make an honest livelihood. It is frankly untrue! Life is becoming more and more difficult to the majority; worldly success is more and more bought at the price of personal dignity. Mere existence for the million is secured only by a warfare in which he who does not slay is slain. But it is idle to enlarge upon the results of our civilization; every one with eyes sees how the conflict rages, and how the weak and often finer-natured go to the wall. It is not for me to urge that it is sad, or wasteful, but only that it _is_. My plea, as some of you know, is that more should realize there is honorable retreat this side moral overthrow." The gray-haired woman moved uneasily. The speaker, glancing at her, seemed to answer an unuttered protest: "Let no one say God would have a man yield bit by bit his faith and charity, accepting any terms, so that he may be allowed to draw his coward breath a little span the more. There is a kind of spiritual cannibalism among us, more appalling than the simpler sort we shudder to think is practised in Darkest Africa, or the islands of the South Sea. It flourishes on our fairest hopes, and fills its witch's caldron with the consciences of men and the honor of our women. 'We must live!' the victims cry, and give up all that makes life worth the living. Maimed, stripped of grace and dignity, they wander forth into the world, to deaden the public sense of moral decency by the spectacle of their shame. The people who are shocked that one should think of suicide permit themselves a mild enthusiasm that long ago a blind King of Bohemia could care so much for his cause that he gathered a sheaf of his enemies' spears in his breast rather than face defeat. We are told there was once a Brutus, too, and many another in the brave old time, who showed there was a refuge this side dishonor. But the world has forgotten, and ancient valor is renamed modern cowardice." Her scorn-filled eyes dropped an instant on the gray-haired woman's fingers fumbling feebly under her mantle. Below it the end of a rosary could be seen twitching against her gown. Mary Burne lifted quiet eyes from the dangling crucifix.