"You have made it a crime in the eyes of society. The non-love-privileged who would be as we are you look upon as the most depraved of criminals. When they have the courage to rebel openly you track them down unmercifully, as our ancestors tracked down and destroyed the wild beasts of the jungle. Some of them behave like beasts, because they have never known love and in them there is also a burning hatred, an anger that is primitive and cruel. But others are men and women of dignity and strength, who give themselves to each other in tenderness, and who know how love can transform the world about them, and everything that is in the world, until the whole of life shines with undying splendor. They can never—"
The accusing voice of the woman was drowned out abruptly by the metallic rasp of an entrance panel opening and closing and another voice so filled with rage that it rose almost instantly to a scream.
"What are you doing here? Who gave you permission to come here? Did you bribe a guard by the lewd display of your charms, or a promise to sleep with him? All of these infants belong to us now, for we are the guardians of the future. Now did I say? They have always belonged to us, even when they were still in the wombs of women such as you, women who perform a necessary but hardly to be admired function in our society.
"You are nothing but wantons and evil temptresses, skilled in all the arts of the harlot, and the men whom you seduce with your charms are no better than jungle savages. How dared you come here? You have no right to look upon a single one of these infants, for they have ceased to be attached to the primitive matrix out of which they have emerged, and we will teach them all that they need to know."
"You will teach them to be as you are!" the kneeling woman cried, a reckless defiance in her voice. "You will do your best to teach them to be harsh and merciless, vindictive and consumed with envy. You will not wholly succeed, for some of them will not surrender their birthright, and will discover for themselves that life without love is too harsh a burden to be endured. They will never know a mother's love, but even without that love a few will have the strength to resist the harshness and the hate that comes from never having experienced a moment of tenderness and affection in childhood."
There was a moment of silence, followed by the sound of a sharply administered slap, and a cry of rage so sharpened by the boiling up of all that was cruel and vindictive in the woman who had been forced to listen to words that had stung her to the quick that it resembled the cry of an animal.
It was Alicia who came to the kneeling woman's rescue, darting so swiftly across the enormous room that she was gripping the enraged woman by the arm and twisting her about before the shock and pain of the blow vanished from the eyes of her accuser.
From the opposite side of the room the two women had resembled shadow-enveloped phantoms, their features barely distinguishable, their identities masked by distance. It was as if Alicia had emerged from one room into another, the first filled with light and the other enshrouded in darkness.
Only when she gripped the enraged woman's arm and swung her about did the gaunt face with its cavernous dark eyes and prominent cheekbones cause her eyes to brighten with the shock of complete recognition and the anger which that recognition aroused in her.
It was an anger that went far beyond the hot indignation which had sent her darting across the room to the kneeling woman's rescue. It was an anger impossible to control, an anger that flamed and shuddered in the depth of her mind until she feared it would consume her.