“But you tried to prevent it?” There was an emphasis on the “tried,” and a pleading little note in her voice.
“Oh, but you didn’t,” she hurried on, divining my answer. “But why didn’t you?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “You must remember, Miss Brewster, that you are a new inhabitant of this little world, and that you do not yet understand the laws which operate within it. You bring with you certain fine conceptions of humanity, manhood, conduct, and such things; but here you will find them misconceptions. I have found it so,” I added, with an involuntary sigh.
She shook her head incredulously.
“What would you advise, then?” I asked. “That I should take a knife, or a gun, or an axe, and kill this man?”
She half started back.
“No, not that!”
“Then what should I do? Kill myself?”
“You speak in purely materialistic terms,” she objected. “There is such a thing as moral courage, and moral courage is never without effect.”
“Ah,” I smiled, “you advise me to kill neither him nor myself, but to let him kill me.” I held up my hand as she was about to speak. “For moral courage is a worthless asset on this little floating world. Leach, one of the men who were murdered, had moral courage to an unusual degree. So had the other man, Johnson. Not only did it not stand them in good stead, but it destroyed them. And so with me if I should exercise what little moral courage I may possess.