“Else would it not be heaven, dost thou mean?” she put in.  “Fie on thee, Holly, to think so ill of us poor women!  Is it, then, marriage that marks the line between thy heaven and thy hell? but enough of this.  This is no time for disputing and the challenge of our wits.  Why dost thou always dispute?  Art thou also a philosopher of these latter days?  As for this woman, she must die; for, though I can take her lover from her, yet, while she lived, might he think tenderly of her, and that I cannot away with.  No other woman shall dwell in my Lord’s thoughts; my empire shall be all my own.  She hath had her day, let her be content; for better is an hour with love than a century of loneliness—­now the night shall swallow her.”

“Nay, nay,” I cried, “it would be a wicked crime; and from a crime naught comes but what is evil.  For thine own sake, do not this deed.”

“Is it, then, a crime, oh foolish man, to put away that which stands between us and our ends?  Then is our life one long crime, my Holly, since day by day we destroy that we may live, since in this world none save the strongest can endure.  Those who are weak must perish; the earth is to the strong, and the fruits thereof.  For every tree that grows a score shall wither, that the strong one may take their share.  We run to place and power over the dead bodies of those who fail and fall; ay, we win the food we eat from out of the mouths of starving babes.  It is the scheme of things.  Thou sayest, too, that a crime breeds evil, but therein thou dost lack experience; for out of crimes come many good things, and out of good grows much evil.  The cruel rage of the tyrant may prove a blessing to the thousands who come after him, and the sweetheartedness of a holy man may make a nation slaves.  Man doeth this, and doeth that from the good or evil of his heart; but he knoweth not to what end his moral sense doth prompt him; for when he striketh he is blind to where the blow shall fall, nor can he count the airy threads that weave the web of circumstance.  Good and evil, love and hate, night and day, sweet and bitter, man and woman, heaven above and the earth beneath—­all these things are necessary, one to the other, and who knows the end of each?  I tell thee that there is a hand of fate that twines them up to bear the burden of its purpose, and all things are gathered in that great rope to which all things are needful.  Therefore doth it not become us to say this thing is evil and this good, or the dark is hateful and the light lovely; for to other eyes than ours the evil may be the good and the darkness more beautiful than the day, or all alike be fair.  Hearest thou, my Holly?”

I felt it was hopeless to argue against casuistry of this nature, which, if it were carried to its logical conclusion, would absolutely destroy all morality, as we understand it.  But her talk gave me a fresh thrill of fear; for what may not be possible to a being who, unconstrained by human law, is also absolutely unshackled by a moral sense of right and wrong, which, however partial and conventional it may be, is yet based, as our conscience tells us, upon the great wall of individual responsibility that marks off mankind from the beasts?