I wish there were words in which to convey the peculiar overtones in Miss Averill’s comparison of herself with a bird in a cage. There was goodness in them, and amusement, as well as something baffled and enraged. She had been so subdued when I had seen her hitherto that I was hardly prepared for this half-smothered outburst of fierceness. "If you’re like a bird in a cage," I said, "you’re like the one that sings to the worker and cheers him up." Her pleasure was expressed not in a change of color or a drooping of the lids, but in a quiet suffusion that might most easily be described as atmospheric. "Oh, as for cheering people up—I don’t know. I’ve tried such a lot of it, only to find that they got along well enough without me. A woman wants more than anything else in the world to feel that she’s needed; and when she discovers she isn’t—" The sense of my own apparent superfluity in life prompted me to say: "Oh, it isn’t only women who discover that." Her glance traveled down the steep wooded bank and over the river, to rest on the wine-colored hills on the other side. "Did you—did you ever?"—she corrected herself quickly—"I mean—do men?" "Some men do. It’s—it’s possible." "Isn’t it," she asked, tackling the subject in her sensible way, "primarily a question of money? If you have enough of it not to have to earn a living—and no particular duties—don’t you find yourself edged out of the current of life? After all, what the world wants is producers; and the minute one doesn’t produce—" "What do you mean by producers?" She reflected. "I suppose I mean all who contribute, either directly or indirectly, either mentally or physically, to the sum total of our needs in living. Wouldn’t that cover it?" I admitted that it might. "And those who don’t do that, who merely live on what others produce, seem to be excluded from the privilege of helpfulness." "I can’t see that. They help with their money." "Money can’t help, except indirectly. It’s the great mistake of our philanthropies to think it can. We make a great many mistakes; but we can make more in our philanthropies than anywhere else. We’ve never taken the pains to study the psychology of help. We think money the panacea for every kind of need, when as a matter of fact it’s only the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. If you haven’t got the grace the sign rings false, like an imitation coin." "Well, what is the grace?" "Oh, it’s a good many things—a blend—of which, I suppose, the main ingredient is love." She gave me a wistful half-smile, as she added: "Love is a very queer thing—I mean this kind of big love for—just for people. You can always tell whether it’s true or false; and the less sophisticated the people the more instinctively they know. If it’s true they’ll accept you; if it’s only pumped up, they’ll shut you out." "I’m sure you ought to know." "I do know. I’ve had a lot of experience—in being shut out." "You?"