"Mary, I know you well enough to trust you now. When you were enrolled some months ago as a member of our Sisterhood, you were informed what would be the penalty of disclosing what was told to you."
"Death," said Mary, looking up with a brave smile. "It is death, I know that."
"I do not mention this because I in any way doubt you. I believe in you as in my own self. If you are not true, no one in the whole world is. But it is my duty to remind you of your promise and the consequences of treason before I reveal to you the secrets of the Inner Circle. Now the time has come, and you shall know our immediate plan. You already know how far-spreading our organization is. You know that we have been training nurses—nurses for the sick and nurses for children—and domestic servants of all classes. You know how we have scattered these over the country, and how many there are now at our disposition, provided with excellent characters and entirely devoted to our cause. Have you ever wondered—have you ever guessed what all this was for?... I can see by your face that you have done so.... At the proper time the secret is revealed to each of these, even as I now reveal it to you. We seek to find places for these sisters in different capacities, but chiefly as nurses in the houses of the wealthy landowners—especially those houses in which the heirs are yet to be born, or are children. Do you understand?"
"I think so."
"For the means, we have to thank Sister Jane—a method safe, impossible of detection, by which the life that is in the way of social good can be extinguished, painlessly too.... Yes, it is more like sleep than death;" and when she spoke of death the woman's voice became tender, the fire of her eyes was dimmed, as a far-away look came into them, and she sighed.
It seemed as if she was envying the peaceful fate of the babies she was devoting to an early grave. No wonder that she felt weary at times beneath all that weight of fierce thought, of subtle plot, of disappointment. Death was no gloomy shadow to this poor distracted mind.
Then she pulled herself together again, and said, in a dreamy voice: "Mary, these Christians believe that their merciful God killed all the first-born of the Egyptians in one night because they had enslaved his people and would not let them go. But that slavery was as nothing to that of the down-trodden millions of Europe."
The young girl felt as if her heart was becoming cold and dead within her, but her will was not hers, and she believed altogether in the righteousness of the cause. She knew that it was her duty to become one of the assassins—to save humanity by being a baby-killer.
So, Mary—Mary! Heavens! what a name for a child-murderer!—bowed her head meekly, and said in a low, passionless voice—a voice that was without modulation, sounding automatic, as if from one in a trance, one not knowing the sense of what she said: