‘What antiquated things?’

’Are you still so slow of understanding?  What were they—­hospitals?  The pretences of a world that can still deceive itself.  Did you expect to find them here?’

‘I expected to find—­how should I know?’ I said, bewildered—­’some shelter for a poor wretch where he could be cared for, not to be left there to die in the street.  Expected!  I never thought.  I took it for granted—­’

‘To die in the street!’ he cried with a smile and a shrug of his shoulders.  ’You’ll learn better by and by.  And if he did die in the street, what then?  What is that to you?’

‘To me!’ I turned and looked at him, amazed; but he had somehow shut his soul, so that I could see nothing but the deep eyes in their caves, and the smile upon the close-shut mouth.  ’No more to me than to any one.  I only spoke for humanity’s sake, as—­a fellow-creature.’

My new acquaintance gave way to a silent laugh within himself, which was not so offensive as the loud laugh of the crowd, but yet was more exasperating than words can say.  ’You think that matters?  But it does not hurt you that he should he in pain.  It would do you no good if he were to get well.  Why should you trouble yourself one way or the other?  Let him die—­if he can—­That makes no difference to you or me.’

‘I must be dull indeed,’ I cried,—­’slow of understanding, as you say.  This is going back to the ideas of times beyond knowledge—­before Christianity—­’ As soon as I had said this I felt somehow—­I could not tell how—­as if my voice jarred, as if something false and unnatural was in what I said.  My companion gave my arm a twist as if with a shock of surprise, then laughed in his inward way again.

’We don’t think much of that here, nor of your modern pretences in general.  The only thing that touches you and me is what hurts or helps ourselves.  To be sure, it all comes to the same thing,—­for I suppose it annoys you to see that wretch writhing; it hurts your more delicate, highly-cultivated consciousness.’

‘It has nothing to do with my consciousness,’ I cried angrily; ’it is a shame to let a fellow-creature suffer if we can prevent it.’

‘Why shouldn’t he suffer?’ said my companion.  We passed as he spoke some other squalid, wretched creatures shuffling among the crowd, whom he kicked with his foot, calling forth a yell of pain and curses.  This he regarded with a supreme contemptuous calm which stupefied me.  Nor did any of the passers-by show the slightest inclination to take the part of the sufferers.  They laughed, or shouted out a gibe, or what was still more wonderful, went on with a complete unaffected indifference, as if all this was natural.  I tried to disengage my arm in horror and dismay, but he held me fast with a pressure that hurt me.  ‘That’s the question,’ he said.  ’What have we to do with it?  Your fictitious consciousness makes it painful to you.  To me, on the contrary, who