"No one can know that for another."
"For animals the account of good and evil may be struck, the pains set against the satisfactions that life offers. When we judge that the balance is on the wrong side, we are merciful,—put the creature out of its misery, as we say. But no human being is an animal in that sense. And no human being can cast his balance of good and evil in that mechanical way—nor any one else for him!"
"But one knows for himself! When you suffer, when all is blank within and you cry as Job cried,—'would God it were morning, and in the morning would God it were night!' then life is not good. If you could be some one else for a few hours, then you might understand—what defeat and living death—"
Oh, if she could tell! The impulse to reveal surged in her heart, that deep human desire to call to another across the desert, so that some one besides the silent stars and the wretched Self may know! Renault waited, his compelling eyes on her face.
"When you have lost the most in your life—hope, love! When you have killed the best!" she murmured brokenly. "Oh, I can't say it! … I can never say it—tell the whole."
Tears fell, tears of pity for the dead child, for herself, for the fine-wrought agony of life.
"But I know!" Renault's voice, low and calm, came as it were from a shut corner of his heart. "I have felt and I have seen—yes, Defeat, Despair, Regret—all the black ghosts that walk."
Isabelle raised her eyes questioningly.
"And it is because of that, that I can raise my face to the stars and say, 'It is good, all good—all that life contains.' And the time will come when you will repeat my words and say to them, 'Amen.'"
"That I could!"