opens up all the wounds of humanity to display their horror.
You tell everything; you speak too plainly; you leave us nothing but
disgust for people and for things, without any possible consolation."

He interrupted her with a cry of ardent conviction.

"We tell everything. Ah, yes; in order to know everything and to remedy
everything!"

Her anger rose, and she sat erect.

"If even equality and justice existed in your nature--but you
acknowledge it yourself, life is for the strongest, the weak infallibly
perishes because he is weak--there are no two beings equal, either in
health, in beauty, or intelligence; everything is left to haphazard
meeting, to the chance of selection. And everything falls into ruin,
when grand and sacred justice ceases to exist."

"It is true," he said, in an undertone, as if speaking to himself,
"there is no such thing as equality. No society based upon it could
continue to exist. For centuries, men thought to remedy evil by
character. But that idea is being exploded, and now they propose
justice. Is nature just? I think her logical, rather. Logic is perhaps
a natural and higher justice, going straight to the sum of the common
labor, to the grand final labor."

"Then it is justice," she cried, "that crushes the individual for the
happiness of the race, that destroys an enfeebled species to fatten
the victorious species. No, no; that is crime. There is in that only
foulness and murder. He was right this evening in the church. The earth
is corrupt, science only serves to show its rottenness. It is on high
that we must all seek a refuge. Oh, master, I entreat you, let me save
myself, let me save you!"

She burst into tears, and the sound of her sobs rose despairingly on
the stillness of the night. He tried in vain to soothe her, her voice
dominated his.

"Listen to me, master. You know that I love you, for you are everything
to me. And it is you who are the cause of all my suffering. I can
scarcely endure it when I think that we are not in accord, that we
should be separated forever if we were both to die to-morrow. Why will
you not believe?"

He still tried to reason with her.

"Come, don't be foolish, my dear--"

But she threw herself on her knees, she seized him by the hands, she
clung to him with a feverish force. And she sobbed louder and louder, in
such a clamor of despair that the dark fields afar off were startled by
it.

"Listen to me, he said it in the church. You must ch