Ilse said: “Force is good! But one uses it legitimately only against rabid things.” She turned affectionately to Palla and took her hands: “Your wonderful Law of Love solves all phenomena except insanity. 107 With rabies it can not deal. Only force remains to solve that problem.”
“And yet,” said Palla, “so much insanity can be controlled by kind treatment.”
Estridge agreed, but remarked that strait-jackets and padded cells would always be necessary in the world.
“As for the Bolsheviki,” said Marya, turning her warm young face to Shotwell with a lissome movement of the shoulders, almost caressing, “in the beginning we social revolutionists agreed with them and believed in them. Why not? Kerensky was an incapable dreamer––so sensitive that if you spoke rudely to him he shrank away wounded to the soul.
“That is not a leader! And the Cadets were plotting, and the Cossacks loomed like a tempest on the horizon. And then came Korniloff! And the end.”
“The peace of Brest,” explained Vanya, in his gentle voice, “awoke us to what the Red Soviets stood for. We saw Christ crucified again. And understood.”
Marya sat up straight on the sofa, running her dazzling white fingers over her hair––hair that seemed tiger-red, and very vaguely scented.
“For thirty pieces of silver,” she said, “Judas sold the world. What Lenine and Trotsky sold was paid for in yellow metal, and there were more pieces.”
Ilse said: “Babushka is dying of it. That is enough for me.”
Vanya replied: “Where the source is infected, drinkers die at the river’s mouth. Little Marie Spiridonova perished. Countess Panina succumbed. Alexandria Kolontar will die from its poison. And, as these died, so shall Ivan and Vera die also, unless that polluted source be cleansed.”