"Oh, yes," she said, "I am very good. I take from them with one hand and give them back thirty per cent. of it with the other; that's what our charity means. And it doesn't really help, that's the irritating part of it. It's just the pouring out of a libation to the God-of-Things-as-they-are. 'The poor always ye have with you.'"
"I sometimes think," he said, "that Christ, when he told the young man to sell all he had and give it to the poor, was thinking rather of the young man than of the poor. It would have done them but such fleeting good. But to the young man it meant the difference between slavery and freedom. To be quit of it all. His horses and his chariots. His fine houses and his countless herds. His army of cringing servants. His horde of fawning clients. How could he win life, bound hand and foot to earth? Not even his soul was his own. It belonged to his great possessions."
She was going into central Russia. She had passed through there some years ago and had happened upon one of its ever recurring famines. There was talk of another in the coming winter.
"The granary of Europe," she continued. "I believe we import one-third of our grain from Russia. And every year the peasants die there of starvation by the thousands. That year I was there
