Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/232

 'It was enough, and it is still enough, to make me willing to lay down my life for anything that will really help them.'

'Yes, and of course you must decide for yourself what that is; or, rather, what it's not.'

'I didn't decide when I gave my promise. I agreed to take the decision of others,' Hyacinth said.

'Well, you said just now that in relation to this business of yours you had thought of many things,' the Princess rejoined. 'Have you ever, by chance, thought of anything that will help the people?'

'You call me fantastic names, but I'm one of them myself.'

'I know what you are going to say!' the Princess broke in. 'You are going to say that it will help them to do what you do—to do their work and earn their wages. That's beautiful so far as it goes. But what do you propose for the thousands and thousands for whom no work—on the overcrowded earth, under the pitiless heaven—is to be found? There is less and less work in the world, and there are more and more people to do the little that there is. The old ferocious selfishnesses must come down. They won't come down gracefully, so they must be smashed!'

The tone in which the Princess uttered these words made Hyacinth's heart beat fast, and there was something so inspiring in her devoted fairness that the vision of a great heroism flashed up again before him, in all the splendour it had lost—the idea of a tremendous risk and an unregarded sacrifice. Such a woman as that, at such a moment, made every scruple seem a prudence and every compunction a cowardice. 'I wish to God I could see it