go against the clerks in such a small matter. Always avoid trouble
over small matters. Don't make bad feeling--don't make bad blood.

MRS. BARLOW. The blood is already rotten in the neighbourhood. What
it needs is letting out. We need a few veins opening, or we shall have
mortification setting in. The blood is black.

MR. BARLOW. We won't accept your figure of speech literally, dear. No,
Gerald, don't go to war over trifles.

GERALD. It's just over trifles that one must make war, father. One can
yield gracefully over big matters. But to be bullied over trifles is a
sign of criminal weakness.

MR. BARLOW. Ah, not so, not so, my boy. When you are as old as I am, you
will know the comparative insignificance of these trifles.

GERALD. The older _I_ get, father, the more such trifles stick in my
throat.

MR. BARLOW. Ah, it is an increasingly irritable disposition in you, my
child. Nothing costs so bitterly, in the end, as a stubborn pride.

MRS. BARLOW. Except a stubborn humility--and that will cost you
more. Avoid humility, beware of stubborn humility: it degrades. Hark,
Gerald--fight! When the occasion comes, fight! If it's one against five
thousand, fight! Don't give them your heart on a dish! Never! If they
want to eat your heart out, make them fight for it, and then give it
them poisoned at last, poisoned with your own blood.--What do you say,
young woman?

ANABEL. Is it for me to speak, Mrs. Barlow?

MRS. BARLOW. Weren't you asked?

ANABEL. Certainly I would NEVER give the world my heart on a dish. But
can't there ever be peace--real peace?

MRS. BARLOW. No--not while there is devilish enmity.

MR. BARLOW. You are wrong, dear, you are wrong. The peace can come, the
peace that passeth all understanding.

MRS. BARLOW. That there is already between me and Almighty God. I am
at peace with the God that made me, and made me proud. With men who
humiliate me I am at war. Between me and the shameful humble there
is war to the end, though they are millions and I am one. I hate the
people. Between my race and them and my children--for ever war, for ever
and ever.

MR. BARLOW. Ah, Henrietta--you have said all this before.

MRS. BARLOW. And say it again. Fight, Gerald. You have my blood in you,
thank God. Fight for it, Gerald. Spend it as if it were costly, Gerald,
drop by drop. Let no dogs lap it.--Look at your father. He set his heart
on a plate at the door, for the poorest mongrel to eat up. See him now,
wast