"And?"
"Well, look at me."
His face remained motionless for a moment, then he smiled gaily and said:
"What's wrong with you, pet? Apart from the fact that your stockings don't match and that you could be more careful about your make-up?"
"Don't laugh, Uncle Ellsworth. Please don't laugh. I know you say we must be able to laugh at everything, particularly at ourselves. Only — I can't."
"I won't laugh, Katie. But what is the matter?"
"I'm unhappy. I'm unhappy in such a horrible, nasty, undignified way. In a way that seems ... unclean. And dishonest. I go for days, afraid to think, to look at myself. And that's wrong. It's ... becoming a hypocrite. I always wanted to be honest with myself. But I'm not, I'm not, I'm not!"
"Hold on, my dear. Don't shout. The neighbors will hear you."
She brushed the back of her hand against her forehead. She shook her head. She whispered:
"I'm sorry ... I'll be all right ... "
"Just why are you unhappy, my dear?"
"I don't know. I can't understand it. For instance, it was I who arranged to have the classes in prenatal care down at the Clifford House — it was my idea — I raised the money — I found the teacher. The classes are doing very well. I tell myself that I should be happy about it. But I'm not. It doesn't seem to make any difference to me. I sit down and I tell myself: It was you who arranged to have Marie Gonzales' baby adopted into a nice family — now, be happy. But I'm not. I feel nothing. When I'm honest with myself, I know that the only emotion I've felt for years is being tired. Not physically tired. Just tired. It's as if ... as if there were nobody there to feel any more."
She took off her glasses, as if the double barrier of her glasses and his prevented her from reaching him. She spoke, her voice lower, the words coming with greater effort:
"But that's not all. There's something much worse. It's doing something horrible to me. I'm beginning to hate people, Uncle Ellsworth. I'm beginning to be cruel and mean and petty in a way I've never been before. I expect people to be grateful to me. I ... I demand gratitude. I find myself pleased when slum people bow and scrape and fawn over me. I find myself liking only those who are servile. Once ... once I told a woman that she didn't appreciate what people like us did for trash like her. I cried for hours afterward, I was so ashamed. I begin to resent it when people argue with me. I feel that they have no right to minds of their own, that I know best, that I'm the final authority for them. There was a girl we were worried about, because she was running around with a very handsome boy who had a bad reputation, I tortured her for weeks about it, telling her how he'd get her in trouble and that she should drop him. Well, they got married and they're the happiest couple in the district. Do you think I'm glad? No, I'm furious and I'm barely civil to the girl when I meet her. Then there was a girl who needed a job desperately — it was really a ghastly situation in her home, and I promised that I'd get her one. Before I could find it, she got a good job all by herself. I wasn't pleased. I was sore as hell that somebody got out of a bad hole without my help. Yesterday, I was speaking to a boy who wanted to go to college and I was discouraging him, telling him to get a good job, instead. I was quite angry, too. And suddenly I realized that it was because I had wanted so much to go to college — you remember, you wouldn't let me — and so I wasn't going to let that kid do it either ... Uncle Ellsworth, don't you see? I'm becoming selfish. I'm becoming selfish in a way that's much more horrible than if I were some petty chiseler pinching pennies off these people's wages in a sweatshop!"
He asked quietly:
"Is that all?"
She closed her eyes, and then she said, looking down at her hands:
"Yes ... except that I'm not the only one who's like that. A lot of them are, most of the women I work with ... I don't know how they got that way ... I don't know how it happened to me ... I used to feel happy when I helped somebody. I remember once — I had lunch with Peter that day — and on my way back I saw an old organ-grinder and I gave him five dollars I had in my bag. It was all the money I had; I'd saved it to buy a bottle of 'Christmas Night,' I wanted 'Christmas Night' very badly, but afterward every time I thought of that organ-grinder I was happy ... I saw Peter often in those days ... I'd come home after seeing him and I'd want to kiss every ragged kid on our block ... I think I hate the poor now ... I think all the other women do, too ... But the poor don't hate us, as they should. They only despise us ... You know, it's funny: it's the masters who despise the slaves, and the slaves who hate the masters. I don't know who is which. Maybe it doesn't fit here. Maybe it does. I don't know ... "
She raised her head with a last spurt of rebellion.
"Don't you see what it is that I must understand? Why is it that I set out honestly to do what I thought was right and it's making me rotten? I think it's probably because I'm vicious by nature and incapable of leading a good life. That seems to be the only explanation. But ... but sometimes I think it doesn't make sense that a human being is completely sincere in good will and yet the good is not for him to achieve. I can't be as rotten as that. But ... but I've given up everything, I have no selfish desire left, I have nothing of my own — and I'm miserable. And so are the other women like me. And I don't know a single selfless person in the world who's happy — except you."
She dropped her head and she did not raise it again; she seemed indifferent even to the answer she was seeking.
"Katie," he said softly, reproachfully, "Katie darling."
She waited silently.
"Do you really want me to tell you the answer?" She nodded. "Because, you know, you've given the answer yourself, in the things you said." She lifted her eyes blankly. "What have you been talking about? What have you been complaining about? About the fact that you are unhappy. About Katie Halsey and nothing else. It was the most egotistical speech I've ever heard in my life."
She blinked attentively, like a schoolchild disturbed by a difficult lesson.
"Don't you see how selfish you have been? You chose a noble career, not for the good you could accomplish, but for the personal happiness you expected to find in it."
"But I really wanted to help people."
"Because you thought you'd be good and virtuous doing it."
"Why — yes. Because I thought it was right. Is it vicious to want to do right?"
"Yes, if it's your chief concern. Don't you see how egotistical it is? To hell with everybody so long as I'm virtuous."
"But if you have no ... no self-respect, how can you be anything?"
"Why must you be anything?"
She spread her hands out, bewildered.
"If your first concern is for what you are or think or feel or have or haven't got — you're still a common egotist."
"But I can't jump out of my own body."
"No. But you can jump out of your narrow soul."
"You mean, I must want to be unhappy?"
"No. You must stop wanting anything. You must forget how important Miss Catherine Halsey is. Because, you see, she isn't. Men are important only in relation to other men, in their usefulness, in the service they render. Unless you understand that completely, you can expect nothing but one form of misery or another. Why make such a cosmic tragedy out of the fact that you've found yourself feeling cruel toward people? So what? It's just growing pains. One can't jump from a state of animal brutality into a state of spiritual living without certain transitions. And some of them may seem evil. A beautiful woman is usually a gawky adolescent first. All growth demands destruction. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You must be willing to suffer, to be cruel, to be dishonest, to be unclean — anything, my dear, anything to kill the most stubborn of roots, the ego. And only when it is dead, when you care no longer, when you have lost your identity and forgotten the name of your soul — only then will you know the kind of happiness I spoke about, and the gates of spiritual grandeur will fall open before you."