Nothing to do with us?  With whom then have you to do?  No, Savva, you don’t love anyone.  You love only yourself and your dreams.  He who loves men will not take away from them all they have.  He will not regard his own wishes more than their lives.  Destroy everything!  Destroy Golgotha!  Consider:  (with terror) destroy Golgotha!  The brightest, the most glorious hope that ever was on earth!  All right, you don’t believe in Christ.  But if you have a single drop of nobility in your nature, you must respect and honor His noble memory.  He was also unhappy.  He was crucified—­crucified, Savva.  You are silent?  Have you nothing to say?

SAVVA

Nothing.

LIPA

I thought—­I thought—­if you succeeded in carrying out your plot—­I thought I’d kill you—­that I’d poison you like some noxious beast.

SAVVA

And if I don’t succeed—­

LIPA

You are still hoping?

SAVVA

And if I don’t succeed, I’ll kill you.

LIPA (advancing a step toward him)

Kill me!  Kill me!  Give me a chance to suffer for the sake of Christ. 
For the sake of Christ and for the sake of the people.

SAVVA

Yes.  I’ll kill you.

LIPA

Do you suppose I didn’t think of it?  Do you suppose I didn’t think of it?  Oh, Lord, to suffer for Thee!  Is there higher happiness than that?

SAVVA (with a contemptuous gesture, pointing at Lipa)

And that’s a human being!  That’s one counted among the best!  That’s the kind in which they take pride!  Ah me, how poor you are in good people!

LIPA

Insult!  Mock!  That’s the way it has always been.  They have always heaped insults upon us before they killed us.

SAVVA

No, I don’t mean to insult you.  How can I insult you?  You are simply a silly woman.  There have been many such in the past.  There are many such to-day.  You are simply a foolish, insignificant creature.  You are even innocent, like all insignificant persons.  And if I mean to kill you, there is no reason to be proud of it.  Don’t think you are an object specially worthy of my indignation.  No, it would merely make matters a little easier for me.  When I was chopping wood, and the axe in my raised arm struck the threshold instead of the log of wood, the jar was not so hard as if someone had arrested the motion of my arm.  A raised hand must fall on something.

LIPA