Dorothy complied with this request. She laid the book aside for two hours. Then she came back to the reading; but before beginning again, she scribbled this paragraph at the bottom of the page last read:—
I have taken two hours of recess from the reading. There was no need of that. My whole soul sympathises with that poor, persecuted little creature. So far from condemning her words or acts, I rejoice in them. I approve them, absolutely and altogether. I see nothing to condemn, nothing to excuse.
Dorothy.
XXV
MORE OF EVELYN’S BOOK
WHEN Dorothy resumed her reading, her sympathies were keenly alive and responsive. She had thought out the matter, and reached a definite conclusion which entirely satisfied her conscience.
“Ordinarily,” she thought, “I should think it excessively wrong to sympathise with a desire to kill, or even to tolerate it in my mind. But I see clearly that in that matter, as in most others, there are questions of circumstance to be considered. Every human being has a right to kill in self-defence. Both law and morals recognise that. In a state of nature, I suppose, every man is constantly at war on his own private account, and he has an entire right to make war in defence of himself and his family. The only reason he hasn’t that right in a state of civilisation is that society protects him, in return for his giving up his right to make private war. But when society, as represented by the state, refuses to protect him, or when the state cannot protect him, he has his right of private war in full force again.