Sara flinched, then rallied all her faith. “Dr. Morse, I did the duty which came to my hands; I had no choice.”
“No choice?” he repeated. “There is always choice! that’s where responsibility comes in. The good woman and the bad woman may not come and stand hand in hand before you, each asking aid. But the good woman, abstractly, is always dying (or—being tempted to turn into a bad woman, for that matter!), so there is always choice. We’ve got to consider moral economics; we’ve no business to gratify our selfish sentimentalism at the expense of society!” He was so much in earnest that he did not see how tensely she was holding herself, or what a look of terror had come into her young face.
“The Gospel of Love is all I can plead,” she said, in the voice of one insisting to herself; “but it is the salvation of the world!”
All the stern anxiety of his face melted into an exaltation as intense as her own. “Law is the salvation of the world! And law means that the good of the whole, not the comfort of the individual, shall be considered; it means a love so sane as to permit the mercy of death.”
Sara put her hands over her face to hide a burst of tears. Her accuser ground his teeth in helpless discomfort.
“I’m right,” he said doggedly, “but I’m a brute; I wish you would forgive me.”
She turned from him, unable to speak. He wanted to follow her, to comfort her; to say, as one does to a child or a woman, “Never mind,”—but he dared not.
“I’m sorry I’ve wounded you,” he said again miserably; “I hope you will forgive me?”
“Forgive you?” she turned and faced him, the tears on her face; “I haven’t anything to forgive. Do you suppose I care how you talk to me?—if I am right? oh, if I am right!”