"Don't you ever feel it? Don't you ever stop to wonder if only they are to blame?"
"I am merely concerned in what they have done. Until they have placed themselves in antagonism to the laws of society, I have nothing to do with them. When they violate the law, then I am bidden to track them down so that they may be made to answer for the wrongs they may have done. It would assist neither them nor myself were I to lose myself in compassionate consideration of things I know nothing about."
"But surely—you must sometimes feel sorry for them—must pity them in their misfortune?"
"There are too many who deserve pity, Mrs. Burke, for me to waste any of mine on people who only injure others. All my pity and sympathy go to the victimised, not to the victimisers."
"It seems so hard, so merciless, so hopeless," she said after a few minutes' silence.
"Have you any compassion for those who stole your papers? Would you have them escape capture and punishment, and so lose for ever all hopes of recovering those papers?"
"I don't know."
There was a note of sadness in her voice, a note almost as unfamiliar as the brevity of her reply.
"To what compassion is the man entitled who struck me down?"
"You don't know—you don't know what made him do it. He may have been forced to do it for the sake of his companion, to save both of them."