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By Root 5030 0

out that in your case it’s nothing but hypocrisy? That is why I find your attitude preposterous. Questions of right have no bearing on human existence. And you’re certainly nothing but human—aren’t you, Henry? You’re no better than any of the men you’re going to face tomorrow. I think you should remember that it’s not for you to make a stand on any sort of principle. Maybe you’re a victim in this particular mess, maybe they’re pulling a rotten trick on you, but what of it? They’re doing it because they’re weak; they couldn’t resist the temptation to grab your Metal and to muscle in on your profits, because they had no other way of ever getting rich. Why should you blame them? It’s only a question of different strains, but it’s the same shoddy human fabric that gives way just as quickly. You wouldn’t be tempted by money, because it’s so easy for you to make it. But you wouldn’t withstand other pressures and you’d fall just as ignominiously. Wouldn’t you? So you have no right to any righteous indignation against them. You have no moral superiority to assert or to defend. And if you haven.‘t, then what is the point of fighting a battle that you can’t win? I suppose that one might find some satisfaction in being a martyr, if one is above reproach. But you—who are you to cast the first stone?”

She paused to observe the effect. There was none, except that his look of attentive interest seemed intensified; he listened as if he were held by some impersonal, scientific curiosity. It was not the response she had expected.

“I believe you understand me,” she said.

“No,” he answered quietly, “I don’t.”

“I think you should abandon the illusion of your own perfection, which you know full well to be an illusion. I think you should learn to get along with other people. The day of the hero is past. This is the day of humanity, in a much deeper sense than you imagine. Human beings are no longer expected to be saints nor to be punished for their sins. Nobody is right or wrong, we’re all in it together, we’re all human—and the human is the imperfect. You’ll gain nothing tomorrow by proving that they’re wrong. You ought to give in with good grace, simply because it’s the practical thing to do. You ought to keep silent, precisely because they’re wrong. They’ll appreciate it. Make concessions for others and they’ll make concessions for you. Live and let live. Give and take. Give in and take in. That’s the policy of our age—and it’s time you accepted it. Don’t tell me you’re too good for it. You know that you’re not. You know that I know it.”

The look of his eyes, held raptly still upon some point in space, was not in answer to her words; it was in answer to a man’s voice saying to him, “Do you think that what you’re facing is merely a conspiracy to seize your wealth? You, who know the source of wealth, should know it’s much more and much worse than that.”

He turned to look at Lillian. He was seeing the full extent of her failure—in the immensity of his own indifference. The droning stream of her insults was like the sound of a distant riveting machine, a long, impotent pressure that reached nothing within him. He had heard her studied reminders of his guilt on every evening he had spent at home in the past three months. But guilt had been the one emotion he had found himself unable to feel. The punishment she had wanted to inflict on him was the torture of shame; what she had inflicted was the torture of boredom.

He remembered his brief glimpse—on that morning in the Wayne-Falkland Hotel—of a flaw in her scheme of punishment, which he had not examined. Now he stated it to himself for the first time. She wanted to force upon him the suffering of dishonor—but his own sense of honor was her only weapon of enforcement. She wanted to wrest from him an acknowledgment of his moral depravity—but only his own moral rectitude could attach significance to such a verdict. She wanted to injure him by her contempt—but he could not be injured, unless he respected her judgment. She wanted to punish him for the pain he had caused her and she held her pain