Bankruptcy is only painful and destructive to small people and helpless people; but then for them everything is painful and destructive; it can be a very light matter to big people; it may be almost painless to a State.

It pained me a little, but not much, still I knew from experience that, however slight and comparatively painless at the time, I should be laid up the next day and possibly for several days.

For each thought I have suffered and been troubled, No dream creation painless from me torn, The blessed lot of Poet not seldom seeming A cross intolerable to be borne!

Such scissions were almost painless in Apex, and he had fancied it would be easy, by an appeal to the girl's pride, to make her see that she owed it to herself to do better.