She did not care
for the flowers to be wired. So I am trying my best without the wire.
But it is difficult."
She left him to his work, and went away, thinking. All the time she had
now been in Petershof had not sufficed to make her indifferent to the
sadness of her surroundings. In vain the Disagreeable Man's preachings,
in vain her own reasonings with herself.
These people here who suffered, and faded, and passed away, who were
they to her?
Why should the faintest shadow steal across her soul on account of them?
There was no reason. And still she felt for them all, she who in the old
days would have thought it waste of time to spare a moment's reflection
on anything so unimportant as the sufferings of an _individual_ human
being.
And the bridge between her former and her present self was her own
illness.
What dull-minded sheep we must all be, how lacking in the very elements
of imagination, since we are only able to learn by personal experience
of grief and suffering, something about the suffering and grief of
others!
Yea, how the dogs must wonder at us: those dogs who know when we are in
pain or trouble, and nestle nearer to us.
So Bernardine reached her own door.
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