"The 'helpful' sort of people are usually a nuisance." But she knew the truth, though passion might still be veiling it from him.

Life, before her father's will forced an abrupt change, had been to her a showman, submitting his exhibits for her gracious approval, shifting them as soon as she looked as if she were about to be bored; and the change had come before she had lived long enough to exhaust and weary of the few things he has for the well-paying passive spectator, but not before she had formed the habit of making only the passive spectator's slight mental exertion.
"Dory is so generous," she thought, with the not acutely painful kind of remorse we lay upon the penitential altar for our own shortcomings, "that he doesn't realize how I'm shirking and letting him do all the pulling." And to him she said, "If you could have seen into my mind while Janet was here, you'd give me up as hopeless." Dory laughed.

"I had a glimpse of it just now--when you didn't like it because I couldn't see my way clear to taking certain people so seriously as you think they deserve." "But you _are_ prejudiced on that subject," she maintained.
"And ever shall be," admitted he, so good-humoredly that she could not but respond.

"It's impossible for me to forget that every luxurious idler means scores who have to work long hours for almost nothing in order that he may be of no use to the world or to himself." "You'd have the whole race on a dead level," said Adelaide.
"Of material prosperity--yes," replied Dory.

"A high dead level.