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, wasted and crossed out like a mistake—­and swear, Gerald, swear to be true to my blood in you.  Never lie down before the mob, Gerald.  Fight it and stab it, and die fighting.  It’s a lost hope—­but fight!

GERALD.  Don’t say these things here, mother.

MRS. BARLOW.  Yes, I will—­I will.  I’ll say them before you, and the child Winifred—­she knows.  And before Oliver and the young woman—­ they know, too.

MR. BARLOW.  You see, dear, you can never understand that, although I am weak and wasted, although I may be crossed out from the world like a mistake, I still have peace in my soul, dear, the peach that passeth all understanding.

MRS. BARLOW.  And what right have you to it?  All very well for you to take peace with you into the other world.  What do you leave for your sons to inherit?

MR. BARLOW.  The peace of God, Henrietta, if there is no peace among men.

MRS. BARLOW.  Then why did you have children?  Why weren’t you celibate?  They have to live among men.  If they have no place among men, why have you put them there?  If the peace of God is no more than the peace of death, why are your sons born of you?  How can you have peace with God, if you leave no peace for your sons—­no peace, no pride, no place on earth?

GERALD.  Nay, mother, nay.  You shall never blame father on my behalf.