"Oh, yes, he was punished. Not by the law. He had no belief in that Fetish of Justice—an eye for an eye. His life was of value—to another. Of what use would it have been to have smashed it with the rest? He found the only way to make good the damage he had done—and he took it."
He spoke firmly, as a man does who has fought through to a clear issue. He heard her move—he fancied that she had held out her hand as though to touch him, and that her hand had dropped.
"Perhaps he was mistaken," she said. "Some one once said to me there is a curse on us—that we are damned to destroy. Perhaps the life he took was justly taken—perhaps it was a bad, valueless life——"
He turned impetuously, with an intensity of feeling far removed from his previous impersonal deliberation.
"You can't tell," he said. "That's the ghastly part of it—you can't tell. You find a piece of broken glass on your road. You grind it under foot or throw it away and think you've done your fellow creatures a service. And then a child comes along crying for its lost treasure. It doesn't matter that you were justified. The thing had its value, after all, and you smashed it. You hurt someone——"
"Some one is always hurt," she interrupted.
A mist of passionate introspection passed from his eyes, and he saw her face—very pale, with a blue shadow about the lips. He started, almost touching her.
"You're ill—tired——!" he stammered.
"A little—it was the heat and the crowd——"
He looked at the light on the green stem of the palm, as though to a warning hand. It had reached the end of its journey and had grown dim. He got up, holding himself desperately erect. "It's the end of the Feast," he said, "the end of our day."