"And why interfere at all?"
"Being interested is not the same as being interfering," she replied
quickly.
"It is difficult to be the one without being the other," he said. "It
requires a genius. There is a genius for being sympathetic as well as
a genius for being good. And geniuses are few."
"But I knew one," Bernardine said. "There was a friend to whom in the
first days of my trouble I turned for sympathy. When others only
irritated, she could soothe. She had only to come into my room, and
all was well with me."
There were tears in Bernardine's eyes as she spoke.
"Well," said the Disagreeable Man kindly, "and where is your genius now?"
"She went away, she and hers," Bernardine said "And that was the end of
that chapter!"
"Poor little child," he said, half to himself. "Don't I too know
something about the ending of such a chapter?"
But Bernardine did not hear him; she was thinking of her friend. She was
thinking, as we all think, that those to whom in our suffering we turn
for sympathy, become hallowed beings. Saints they may not be; but for
want of a better name, saints they are to us, gracious and lovely
presences. The great time Eternity, the great space Death, could not rob
them of their saintship; for they were canonized by our bitterest tears.
She was roused from her reverie by the Disagreeable Man, who got up, and
pushed his chair noisily under the table.
"Will you come and help me to develop some photographs?" he asked
cheerily. "You do not need to have a straight eye for that!"
Then as they went along together, he said:
"When we come to think about it seriously, it is rather absurd for us to
expect to have uninterrupted stretches of happiness. Happiness falls to
our share in separate detached bits; and those of us who are wise,
content ourselves with these broken fragments."
"But who is wise?" Bernardine asked. "Why, we all expect to be happy.
No one told us that we were to be happy. Still, though no one told us,
it is the true instinct of human nature."
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