’No!  If life had become unbearable you were justified.  When you said I had no right to interfere, you spoke the truth.  No man has the right to insist upon a fellow-creature continuing to live when life has become intolerable.’  Jim was most emphatic on this point.

’Hush!  Oh, hush!  I know I said it, and I have thought it too; but the thought was born of weakness and cowardice.’

Done, who thought he understood himself clearly, and believed he had a plan of life as precise and logical as the multiplication table, was puzzled by a nature almost wholly emotional, and she continued: 

’I mean to be brave, to meet the future with hope.  It was my loneliness that terrified me.  I thought it might be always so, but perhaps real happiness awaits me out there.  I may make true friends.’

She spoke eagerly, anxiously, seeking corroboration, looking to him for encouragement with touching wistfulness, as if he had been a graybeard and an old and trusted friend, rather than a mere youth in years, and an acquaintance of only a few hours.

He felt the appeal, and tried to respond.

‘Yes yes,’ he said.  ’Then, at least, one can always fight the world.  If we can’t be loved, we can make ourselves feared.  There’s a great deal in that.’

The girl was surprised at his warmth, and a little startled by his philosophy.

‘I could not think that,’ she said softly.  ’It must be terrible to be feared—­to meet always with doubt and shrinking where you look for confidence and affection.’

’But when the world refuses to accept us, when it uses all our fine emotions as scourges to torture us, then we must fight.’

‘I—­I fight the world!’ The girl rose in some agitation, and raised two tremulous hands, as if in evidence of her weakness.

The gesture staggered him a little.  He had been not so much defining her position as defending his own, and although he could see the futility of his principle of resentment as applied to her case, it was not in his nature to preach the pleasing gospel of sentimental optimism.  He had no words of comfort to offer her; the gentle platitudes of encouragement and consolation she needed, and which would have fallen so glibly from the lips of an average man, were impossible to him.  He was silent.

‘One had better die,’ continued Lucy Woodrow, ’than live at enmity with one’s fellow-creatures.  Ah! the world is good and kind, under its seeming cruelties.  People are more generous than we know, but we should meet them with open hearts, and give a warm welcome to their affection and confidence.  There must be something evil in the nature that is shut out from human sympathy, human fellowship—­something wanting in the heart that is lonely, where there are scores of men and women eager to give friendship and love.  We repel those who are drawn to us by their goodness of heart; we refuse what we most long for, and then blame others because we are unhappy.’