Page:The Inner House.djvu/154

150 He stopped. That was a speech likely to win indulgence from the Court, was it not?

I turned to the woman Mildred.

"And you?" I asked.

"What have I to say? The Present I loathe—I loathe—I loathe. I would not go back to it if you offered me instant release with that condition. I have found Love. Let me die—let me die—let me die!"

She clung to her lover passionately, weeping and sobbing. He soothed her and caressed her. John Lax, behind me, snorted.

Then I asked the girl Christine what she wished to say.

She laughed—she actually laughed.

"Oh!" she said, "in return for the past weeks, there is no punishment which I would not cheerfully endure. We have had—oh! the most delightful time. It has been like a dream. Oh! Cruel, horrid, wicked men! You found such a Life in the old Time, and you destroyed it; and what have you given us in return? You have made us all equal who were born unequal. Go, look at the sad and heavy faces of the People. You have taken away everything, deliberately. You have destroyed all—all. You have left nothing worth living for. Why, I am like Mildred. I would not go back to the Present again if I could! Yes, for one thing I would—to try and raise a Company of Men—not sheep—and hound them on to storm this place, and to kill—yes, to kill"—the girl looked so dangerous that any thought of mercy was impossible—"every one who belongs to this Accursed House of Life!"

Here was a pretty outcome of study in the Museum! Here was a firebrand let loose among us straight from the bad old Nineteenth Century! And we had allowed this girl actually to grow up in our very midst.