“Oh, I am, I am. I am going to that land ‘where one’s wounded feelings are sure of shelter.’ Come along, Clara. Haven’t you taken risks enough in Russia? Come and serve your own people, your poor, trodden people. Have not the riots been enough to open your eyes, Clara?”
“As if those were the only riots there were,” she returned, pensively. “All humanity is in the hands of rioters.”
“But our homes are being destroyed, Clara,” he urged in an impassioned undertone. “Our people are being plundered, maimed, their every feeling is outraged, their daughters are assaulted.”
“Is there anything new in that?” she asked, in the same pensive tone. “Are not the masses robbed of the fruit of their toil? Are they not maimed in the workshops or in the army? Are not their daughters reduced to dishonour by their own misery and by the lust of the mighty? Are not the cities full of human beings without a home? All Russia is riot-ridden. The whole world, for that matter. The riots that you are dwelling upon are only a detail. Do away with the riot and all the others will disappear of themselves.”
A note of animation came into her melancholy voice.
“What you ‘Americans’ propose to do,” she continued, “is to clasp a handful of victims in your arms and to flee to America with them. Well, I have no fault to find with you, Volodia. I wish you and your party success. But the great, great bulk of victims, Gentiles as well as Jews, remain here, and the rioters—the throne, the bureaucracy, the drones—remain with them.”
She struck him as amazingly beautiful this morning and she seemed to speak as one inspired. He listened to her with a feeling of reverence.
“But you have done enough, Clara,” he said when she finished. “You have faced dangers enough. Sooner or later you will be taken, and then—” (he threw up his hands sadly). “You have a perfect right to save your life and liberty now.”
She shook her head.