"Of
course," I exclaimed, "of course. For God is love, remember, and love
means charity, tolerance, sympathy, and sparing others pain," and I
hurried past her, determined to end the outrageous conversation for
which yet I knew myself entirely to blame. Behind me, she stood
stock-still for several minutes, half bewildered, half alarmed, as I
suspected. I caught the fragment of another sentence, one word of it,
rather--"punishment"--but the rest escaped me. Her arrogance and
condescending tolerance exasperated me, while I was at the same time
secretly pleased that I might have touched some string of remorse or
sympathy in her after all. Her belief was iron; she dared not let it go;
yet somewhere underneath there lurked the germ of a wholesome revulsion.
She would help "them"--if she dared. Her question proved it.
Half ashamed of myself, I turned and crossed the hail quickly lest I
should be tempted to say more, and in me was a disagreeable sensation as
though I had just left the Incurable Ward of some great hospital. A
reaction caught me as of nausea. Ugh! I wanted such people cleansed by
fire. They seemed to me as centers of contamination whose vicious
thoughts flowed out to stain God's glorious world.
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