“Still, suffering exists among them,” she reasoned, “and, while the fault may be as you say, the families of these men--misguided though they may be--are the victims rather than the culprits. I suppose it would be only common humanity to give them help.” “Oh, yes; that is true,” he acknowledged. “The women and children have to play martyr while the men indulge in what our new economists delight to call divine discontent. By the way,” he went on, “I am paying some charitable concern five thousand liras a year.” His manner told her that it was a benefice ungraced by a sense of moral obligation; that he merely had followed the example of modern rich men by returning a part of his tremendous revenue in benefactions to the public. “It is good to give heart to the disheartened, relief to the suffering,” she said, holding up a journal they had obtained at Turin. “Have you seen this account of disorders in the Porta Ticinese quarter? I fear there is a hungry mouth in Milan that will show its teeth some day.” Tarsis could hear the voice of Mario Forza. He betrayed a twitching of the lips, but tried to carry it off with a careless smile, as he said: “I suppose the money is put to good use. Precisely how they disburse it I do not know. The secretary sends printed reports, but I have not read them.” There was a quality of absence in his manner, accounted for by the fact that his mind was busying itself with Hera’s remark about the hungry mouth. While in Paris he had received by post from unknown senders not one but many copies of the newspaper that contained the picture of his punched nose and its plenteous flow of gold pieces. Then the cartoon had seemed to him merely one more shaft of malice aimed at a successful man. In his career of achievement he had steeled his sensibility against criticism, rating it as the twin brother of envy, and borrowing no disquiet on either score; but now, grace to the chance observation of Hera, he saw the cartoon with a new and clearer eye. He perceived the force at work behind it--the popular ill-will, which gave such point to the product of the artist’s pencil; and he apprehended, as he never had before, that herein smouldered an ember easily fanned to flame.