There was a long pause. Then she said slowly: "It seems to be your only hope, doesn't it? Well, I guess you had better go. God bless you!" she concluded as though it were her last word.
Suddenly it occurred to him that he had been thinking and talking of himself alone. The idea of parting from this woman who could see, whom it seemed to him he had found as his own means of salvation, immediately became impossible.
"I am going to take you with me," he stated quietly.
He had forgotten it for the moment. Now it filled him with new terror. He laid his hand on hers. "I can't help it," he said finally, "I can't leave you. I will carry you."
He felt her fear that she would hamper him. "Don't be foolish," he said as though he had known her for years, "I am not being gallant. This is not a time for gallantry. I am simply being sensible. You can't sit here, can you?"
"I can't help myself, can I? I can't walk."
"It would simply make your chance of escape impossible," she argued. "It is preposterous. Why should you? Your life is worth to you as much as mine is to me. I know what that means. I would not stay here if I could help it. I would not sacrifice my life for yours. Neither shall you sacrifice yours for mine."
"See here," he demanded, "who are you and where did you get that attitude toward life?"
It was one he knew. It was the hard, relentless theory of the struggle of animal survival which his thinking in college had led him to accept. There was in it no touch of duty, no sense of obligation, and very little pity. He had called himself a hard materialist, and had never lived up to his theory. Now here beside him in this outlandish situation was a woman quietly arguing his own philosophy of life to him against herself.
She laughed. "It's my way of thinking, and I mean it," she said, twisting her hair up on her head. "I got it out of four years of thought and reading in a college, and I do not thank the college for it. I find it very inconvenient, but it is my belief. I have tried to live by it."
"So is it mine," he said, "and I mean to live by it."
"Very well," she answered. "That aggressive tone against me is not necessary. Go ahead and get through if you can. Good-by, my friend."