The only way to test for real, uncalculated kindness is to test for it where there is no fortune in view at all, where the person being tested has no idea there is anything to gain, where their kindness can be nothing but itself.

And so Julian, brilliantly, hid the fortune completely.

He presented himself as a penniless, forgotten old man, a person from whom nothing could possibly be gained, and he watched to see whether I would be kind to him anyway.

It was the only honest test there is.

My kindness to him could not have been mercenary, because I believed there was nothing to be mercenary about.

He watched a stranger be genuinely, uselessly good to a man she thought had nothing, and that was proof, the only real proof possible, that the goodness was real.