Violet. No.
L. Well, if eye and foot are dead already, and betray you—if the light that is in you be darkness, and your feet run into mischief, or are taken in the snare,—it is indeed time to pluck out, and cut off, I think: but, so crippled, you can never be what you might have been otherwise. You enter into life, at best, halt or maimed; and the sacrifice is not beautiful, though necessary.
Violet (after a pause). But when one sacrifices one's self for others?
L. Why not rather others for you?
Violet. Oh! but I couldn't bear that.
L. Then why should they bear it?
Dora (bursting in, indignant). And Thermopylæ, and Protesilaus, and Marcus Curtius, and Arnold de Winkelried, and Iphigenia, and Jephthah's daughter?
L. (sustaining the indignation unmoved). And the Samaritan woman's son?
Dora. Which Samaritan woman's?
L. Read 2 Kings vi. 29.