Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/247

Rh absent. “And you mustn’t think I want you to marry, Justine; not for myself, I mean—I’d so much rather keep you here. I feel much less lonely when you’re with me. But you say you won’t stay—and it’s too dreadful to think of your going back to that dreary hospital.”

“But you know the hospital’s not dreary to me,” Justine interposed; “it’s the most interesting place I’ve ever known.”

Mrs. Amherst smiled indulgently on this extravagance. “A great many people go through the craze for philanthropy—" she began in the tone of mature experience; but Justine interrupted her with a laugh.

“Philanthropy? I’m not philanthropic. I don’t think I ever felt inclined to do good in the abstract—any more than to do ill! I can’t remember that I ever planned out a course of conduct in my life. It’s only,” she went on, with a puzzled frown, as if honestly trying to analyze her motives, “it’s only that I’m so fatally interested in people that before I know it I’ve slipped into their skins; and then, of course, if anything goes wrong with them, it’s just as if it had gone wrong with me; and I can’t help trying to rescue myself from their troubles! I suppose it’s what you’d call meddling—and so should I, if I could only remember that the other people were not myself!”

Bessy received this with the mild tolerance of [ 231 ]