He interrupted her with a cry of ardent conviction.
“We tell everything. Ah, yes; in order to know everything and to remedy everything!”
Her anger rose, and she sat erect.
“If even equality and justice existed in your nature—but you acknowledge it yourself, life is for the strongest, the weak infallibly perishes because he is weak—there are no two beings equal, either in health, in beauty, or intelligence; everything is left to haphazard meeting, to the chance of selection. And everything falls into ruin, when grand and sacred justice ceases to exist.”
“It is true,” he said, in an undertone, as if speaking to himself, “there is no such thing as equality. No society based upon it could continue to exist. For centuries, men thought to remedy evil by character. But that idea is being exploded, and now they propose justice. Is nature just? I think her logical, rather. Logic is perhaps a natural and higher justice, going straight to the sum of the common labor, to the grand final labor.”
“Then it is justice,” she cried, “that crushes the individual for the happiness of the race, that destroys an enfeebled species to fatten the victorious species. No, no; that is crime. There is in that only foulness and murder. He was right this evening in the church. The earth is corrupt, science only serves to show its rottenness. It is on high that we must all seek a refuge. Oh, master, I entreat you, let me save myself, let me save you!”
She burst into tears, and the sound of her sobs rose despairingly on the stillness of the night. He tried in vain to soothe her, her voice dominated his.
“Listen to me, master. You know that I love you, for you are everything to me. And it is you who are the cause of all my suffering. I can scarcely endure it when I think that we are not in accord, that we should be separated forever if we were both to die to-morrow. Why will you not believe?”
He still tried to reason with her.
“Come, don’t be foolish, my dear—”