"That it has been good enough for you doesn't cover the question," he said, brutally, adding in haste, "even if you didn't deceive yourself. It is not, as things are, good enough for all. But Uncle John was right: it would be a better place to live in if people hesitated to perpetuate disease."
"Perpetuate disease! What folly you talk! Don't you see that your improved new modes of living breed new diseases? If you have not the cholera of my youth, you have the Bright's disease and the influenza that we knew nothing of. Disease is part of the plan."
"What an awful doctrine!"
"Not at all. I can't be sure that it wouldn't leave the world poorer if disease were got rid of. I'm not, like you, ready to arraign the Everlasting." (Val opened the door softly, came in, and stood at the foot of the bed.) "To my finite mind, unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out. I only know that they are just, and that I am the work of His hand."
"I envy you your faith."
"No, you don't. You think yourself superior to it, and what's the result? You walk in darkness."
"Not altogether in darkness." He looked across at the girl.
"Yes, in darkness and in fear. Not the fear of God—that's tonic—but in the fear of pain. Oh, I've watched this phase of modern life. It's been coming, coming for years. The world to-day is crushed and whining under a load of sentimentality. People presently will be afraid to move, lest they do or receive some hurt."
"All people don't wear your armor."