"
"But these may get safely into the light and fullness of Heaven."
"Yes," he said, thoughtfully; "but how few of them will live up to the
requirements of admittance to that perfect place?"
"The rich have as many shortcomings as the poor. Sometimes I think they
have even more."
"You are very democratic."
"Is that a serious charge against me? The one perfect Being our world has
seen chose poverty, and a lot among the lowly. When the world grows
older, and men get wiser, possibly they will make the same choice."
"There have been solitary instances of the like along the ages--men of
whom the world was not worthy--but the most of us are not such stuff as
heroes are made of."
I turned to him with kindling eyes: "Wouldn't you like to be one of them,
Mr. Bovyer?"
He gave me a look that some way I did not care to meet, and turned my
eyes away quickly to a restless black-eyed little girl who was stretching
eager hands to a pink-cheeked dollie.
"You feel the sorrows of the poor and suffering more keenly than the most
of us, I fear, Miss Selwyn," he said--more to draw me into conversation
than anything else.
"My sympathies are of a very easy-going, aesthetic kind. Some of your
splendid music makes me cry. While I listen, I think of the hungry and
broken-hearted. I seem to hear their moans in the sob and swell of the
music. It was that which made Beethoven's Symphony so sad."
He did not say anything for a good while, and fell to watching the
longing in the children's faces, and my heart grew very pitiful towards
them.
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