And, as Palla, recognising him, turned around, he shook his fists at her and at Ilse, promising that they should be attended to when the proper moment arrived.
Then he spat again, laughed a rather ghastly and 163 distorted laugh, and backed into the doorway behind him.
They walked east––there being no taxi in sight. Ilse and Brisson led; Palla followed beside Jim.
“Well,” said the latter, his voice not yet under complete control, “don’t you think you’d better keep away from such places in the future?”
She was still very much excited: “It’s abominable,” she exclaimed, “that this country should permit such lies to be spread among the people and do nothing to counteract this campaign of falsehood! What is going to happen, Jim, unless educated people combine to educate the ignorant?”
“How?” he asked contemptuously.
“By example, first of all. By the purity and general decency of their own lives. I tell you, Jim, that the unscrupulous greed of the educated is as dangerous and vile as the murderous envy of the Bolsheviki. We’ve got to reform ourselves before we can educate others. And unless we begin by conforming to the Law of Love and Service, some day the Law of Hate and Violence will cut our throats for us.”
“Palla,” he said, “I never dreamed that you’d do such a thing as you did to-night.”
“I was afraid,” she said with a nervous tightening of her arm under his, “but I was still more afraid of being a coward.”
“You didn’t have to answer that crazy anarchist!”