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"And why," he asked, almost soothingly, "should it be terrible?" He couldn't, at the worst, see that.

"Because it's always so--the idea of having to pity people."

"Not when there's also, with it, the idea of helping them."

"Yes, but if we can't help them?"

"We CAN--we always can. That is," he competently added, "if we care for them. And that's what we're talking about."

"Yes"--she on the whole assented. "It comes back then to our absolutely refusing to be spoiled."

"Certainly. But everything," the Prince laughed as they went on-- "all your 'decency,' I mean--comes back to that."

She walked beside him a moment. "It's just what _I_ meant," she then reasonably said.