Read "Jess" by H. Rider Haggard online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"Do you know, you are a very odd person, Miss Jess," John said presently, with a little laugh. "I don't think you can have a happy mind."
She looked up. "A happy mind? " she said. "Who _can_ have a happy mind? Nobody who feels. Supposing," she went on after a pause-"supposing one puts oneself and one's own little interests and joys and sorrows quite away, how is it possible to be happy, when one feels the breath of human misery beating on one's face, and sees the tide of sorrow and suffering creeping up to one's feet? You may be on a rock yourself and out of the path of it, till the spring floods or the hurricane wave come to sweep you away, or you may be afloat upon it: whichever it is, it is quite impossible, if you have any heart, to be indifferent."