"You can't wash your hands. You can't say, 'Go home, boys.' They have to fight their way home. First, they have to fight their way to the east out of this valley—against old Russia!... It's the first great battle of the Old and New—first time in the history of the world. We hold the New for better or worse—this little Theban band. You would let us fail and dribble away and slink into the Marshes—you, her lover, whom she calls Boy and Strongheart——"
"What did she say?" he asked fiercely.
"——that I need not speak of her coming unless you needed help. She said you would not need help on account of your own lack of courage—rather that it would be your great tenderness that might defeat our Cause now. She said this was but a last ordeal, hardest of all for Builders, who have ceased to kill...."
"Where did you see her?"
It was all a lie, of course, except I had dreamed of her coming. I invented a place of meeting and added to his question that Sedgwick did not know of her presence.
"I agreed that we were not killers, but I told her that we dared to be cruel to ourselves," I added.
"What did she say to that?" Varsieff asked hoarsely. He had suddenly become like a child—one who dared not go to her, who scarcely trusted himself to speak.
"She said that was the key to the whole matter—that we dare to sacrifice ourselves—dare to inflict pain upon each other because one's true love is the self—"