“What?”
“Yes, Violet, I had thought of it—and of other things also. While Aurelia was here, I was reading a little book. It told me what I once knew and had since forgotten. It told me that if we have ideals we should live for them, that it is only by living for them and suffering for them that we can lift ourselves above the brutes. Violet, it was sinful of me to think of going with Gulian.”
Dispassionately the now mollified lady toned that phrase.
“It was not perhaps quite nice.”
“But I had not seen,” Leilah continued. “No, not that,” she interrupted herself to explain. “I had forgotten that this prison, all I have endured, all I shall endure, these are my debts to the Lords of Karma.”
But that was a bit too strong. Violet laughed.
“You mean the Lords of Gammon.”
“I mean,” Leilah, with heightening fervour, replied, “that I have looked upon my prison as a cross. It is not a cross, it is a boon—one of which I have not been worthy. For I forgot that any sorrow should be welcomed. I forgot that it has been sent to make us nobler than we are. But my sorrows I have not welcomed. I have rebelled against them. I shall rebel no more. They were my masters. They shall be my servants now.”
At these fine sentiments Violet sniffed.