there's something I should like to say to you. It's this. You are far
too soft-hearted. If you want to get on in life, you must think more
about yourself than you do. The battle is to the strong, you know, and
the strong, within limits, are certainly the selfish. Let other people
look after themselves; try not to mind how foolish they are--you can't
improve them. It's harder, I daresay, than it is to be a person of
unlimited sympathies; it's harder to pass the maimed and crippled by,
than to stop and weep over them, and feel their sufferings through
yourself. But YOU have really something in you to occupy yourself
with. You're not one of those people--I won't mention names!--whose own
emptiness forces them to take an intense interest in the doings of
others, and who, the moment they are alone with their thoughts, are
bored to desperation. just as there are people who have no talent for
making a home home-like, and are only happy when they are out of it."

Here she laughed at her own seriousness.

"But you are smiling inwardly, and thinking: the real old school-marm!"

"You don't practise what you preach, Madeleine. Besides, you're
mistaken. At heart, I'm a veritable egoist."

She contradicted him. "I know you better than you know yourself."

He did not reply, and a silence fell, in which the commonplace words
she had last said, went on sounding and resounding, until they had no
more likeness to themselves. Madeleine rose, and pushed back her
chair, with a grating noise.

"I must light the lamp. Sitting in the dark makes for foolishness.