MR. BARLOW. Ah, it is an increasingly irritable disposition in you, my child. Nothing costs so bitterly, in the end, as a stubborn pride.
MRS. BARLOW. Except a stubborn humility—and that will cost you more. Avoid humility, beware of stubborn humility: it degrades. Hark, Gerald—fight! When the occasion comes, fight! If it's one against five thousand, fight! Don't give them your heart on a dish! Never! If they want to eat your heart out, make them fight for it, and then give it them poisoned at last, poisoned with your own blood.—What do you say, young woman?
ANABEL. Is it for me to speak, Mrs. Barlow?
MRS. BARLOW. Weren't you asked?
ANABEL. Certainly I would NEVER give the world my heart on a dish. But can't there ever be peace—real peace?
MRS. BARLOW. No—not while there is devilish enmity.
MR. BARLOW. You are wrong, dear, you are wrong. The peace can come, the peace that passeth all understanding.
MRS. BARLOW. That there is already between me and Almighty God. I am at peace with the God that made me, and made me proud. With men who humiliate me I am at war. Between me and the shameful humble there is war to the end, though they are millions and I am one. I hate the people. Between my race and them and my children—for ever war, for ever and ever.
MR. BARLOW. Ah, Henrietta—you have said all this before.
MRS. BARLOW. And say it again. Fight, Gerald. You have my blood in you, thank God. Fight for it, Gerald. Spend it as if it were costly, Gerald, drop by drop. Let no dogs lap it.—Look at your father. He set his heart on a plate at the door, for the poorest mongrel to eat up. See him now, wasted and crossed out like a mistake—and swear, Gerald, swear to be true to my blood in you. Never lie down before the mob, Gerald. Fight it and stab it, and die fighting. It's a lost hope—but fight!