Mrs. Wharton.
You’ve had the privilege of giving two sons to a noble cause. Wasn’t it worth while to be born for that?
Mrs. Littlewood.
Sometimes I’ve asked myself if this world in which we’re living now isn’t hell. Perhaps all the unhappiness my husband caused me and the death of those two boys of mine is a punishment for sins that I committed in some other life in some other part of the universe.
Mrs. Wharton.
Charlotte, sometimes you say things that frighten me. I’m haunted by the fear that you may destroy yourself.
Mrs. Littlewood.
I? No, why should I? I don’t feel that life is important enough for me to give it a deliberate end. I don’t trouble to kill the fly that walks over my ceiling.
Dr. Macfarlane.
I’ve been curing or killing people for hard on fifty years, and it seems to me that I’ve seen innumerable generations enter upon the shifting scene, act their little part, and pass away. Alas, who can deny that in this world virtue is very often unrewarded and vice unpunished? Happiness too rarely comes to the good, and the prizes of this life go too frequently to the undeserving. The rain falls on the just and on the unjust alike, but the unjust generally have a stout umbrella. It looks as though there were little justice in the world, and chance seems to rule man and all his circumstances.