'Oh, certainly, Miss Marcia, we all know that your father had no thought of deliberately harming Italy or any other country. And, as a matter of fact, the American wheat corner has not had so much to do with the trouble as the Italian government would have us believe. The simple truth is that your father has been used as a scapegoat. While the Roman papers have been suggestively silent on many points, they have had much to say of the American Wheat King.'
'Have the things they said been very bad?'
'There's not been much, to tell the truth, that he will care to cut out and paste in his scrap-book.'
'Our party, next week, seems heartless, doesn't it--sort of like giving a ball while the people next door are having a funeral? I wanted to give it up, but Uncle Howard looked so hurt when I proposed it that I didn't say anything more about it.'
'No, certainly not. That would be foolish and useless. Because some people have to be unhappy is no reason why all should be.'
'I suppose not,' she agreed slowly; and then she added, 'The world used to be so much pleasanter to live in before I knew there was any misery in it--I wish I didn't have to know!'
'Miss Marcia, I told you the other day that it was a relief sometimes to see people who are thoroughly, irresponsibly happy; who dance over the pit without knowing it's there. A man who has been in the pit, who knows all its horrors--who feels as if he reeked with them--likes occasionally to see some one who doesn't even know of its existence. And yet in the end do you think he can thoroughly respect such blindness? Don't you feel that you are happier in a worthier sense when you look at life with your eyes open; when you honestly take the bad along with the good?'
She sat silent for a few minutes, apparently considering his words. Presently he added--
'As for your party, I think you may dance with a free conscience. You've done what you could to help matters on, and you'll do a great deal more in the future.'
'I'm afraid that my conscience didn't have much to do with wanting to give up the ball,' she acknowledged, with a slightly guilty laugh. 'It's simply that I can't bear to meet people, and feel that all the time they're talking to me they're calling me in their minds "the Wheat Princess."'