“You are human and fallible.”
“I am: so are you—what then?”
“The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted.”
“What power?”
“That of saying of any strange, unsanctioned line of action,—‘Let it be right.’”
“‘Let it be right’—the very words: you have pronounced them.”
“May it be right then,” I said, as I rose, deeming it useless to continue a discourse which was all darkness to me; and, besides, sensible that the character of my interlocutor was beyond my penetration; at least, beyond its present reach; and feeling the uncertainty, the vague sense of insecurity, which accompanies a conviction of ignorance.
“Where are you going?”
“To put Adèle to bed: it is past her bedtime.”
“You are afraid of me, because I talk like a Sphynx.”