"Why should I? They are not worth while."
"Do you speak now as an artist?" he asked, gravely.
"But they are so gross and so cruel!"
"I don't deny but they are, sometimes, both gross and cruel, but so are civilized men. The scalp-dance no more represents them than a bayonet charge represents us. It isn't just to condemn all for the faults of a few. You wouldn't destroy servant-girls because some of them are ugly and untidy, would you?"
"The cases are not precisely similar."
"I'll admit that, but the point is here: as an artist you can't afford to dispose of a race on the testimony of their hereditary enemies. You wouldn't expect a sympathetic study of the Greek by the Saracen, would you?"
"It isn't that so much, but they are so perfectly unimportant. They have no use in the world. What does it matter if they die, or don't?"
"Perhaps not so much to them; but to me, if I can help them and fail to do it, it matters a great deal. We can't afford to be unjust, for our own sake. The bearer of the torch should not burn, he should illumine."
"I don't understand that," she said, genuinely searching for his meaning.
"There is where you disappoint me," he retorted. "Most women quiver with altruistic passion the moment they see helpless misery. If you saw a kitten fall into a well what would you do?"