He walked the length of the room and turned.
“Unless we can capture those flying stages in the next hour—there will be horrible things. We shall be beaten.
“No!” she said. “We have justice—we have the people. We have God on our side.”
“Ostrog has discipline—he has plans. Do you know, out there just now I felt—. When I heard that these aeroplanes were a stage nearer. I felt as if I were fighting the machinery of fate.”
She made no answer for a while. “We have done right,” she said at last.
He looked at her doubtfully. “We have done what we could. But does this depend upon us? Is it not an older sin, a wider sin?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“These blacks are savages, ruled by force, used as force. And they have been under the rule of the whites two hundred years. Is it not a race quarrel? The race sinned—the race pays.”
“But these labourers, these poor people of London—!”
“Vicarious atonement. To stand wrong is to share the guilt.”