"I know." Varensky nodded soothingly. "You're only one of the many agents of social vengeance. What I ought to have asked you was to give me the part of her life that does belong to you. She's in your clutches. Let her escape. Keep silent and drop your pursuit."
Varensky tucked his legs closer under him and bent forward. "Perhaps I could turn her into a saint." A note of passionate pleading crept into his voice. "She loves children. It was how her wickedness started. She was blind and mistaken, and all her crimes were committed for children. A woman who loves children must be good. She's done abominable things. She could become magnificent if she would do good with an equal violence."
The Major glanced at the subject of these prophecies, sitting in their midst, rebelliously silent. He said wearily: "Mere words! You offer me no proof!"
The white face seemed to grow till it filled the room. The green eyes glowed like emeralds. They were uncanny and hypnotic. Language came in a torrent. "It isn't her body--it's her soul. If she were to die now, what would happen to her? I tried to save the soul of a nation. Let me do for Santa what I couldn't do for Russia--prove that mercy restores where punishment destroys. There's been too much killing. The world grows worse instead of better. It's been going on for ages, this hanging and guillotining and bludgeoning. It's reformed nothing. It's the might is right of the jungle, the justice of apes and cavemen. Revenge, whether it's carried out by tooth and claw or by law-courts and armies, never heals anything; it always leaves a bruise. The face of Europe is bruised beyond recovery by our last display of justice. Its fields are rotten with corpses. Shall we add one more to the many--a woman's?"
He paused, trembling like a leaf. When the Major only frowned, he sank back exhausted.
"If you'd seen what I've seen--" His head sagged stupidly. "If you'd seen what I've seen--miles of men, all slaughtered; women dead of starvation, children hunting in packs like wolves. And all because there's no mercy. If you'd seen, you couldn't kill anything."
The candles ceased to gutter. Shadows huddled motionless. The very silence seemed accused.
Hindwood rose. He could endure the tension no longer. "I know nothing about her soul and not much about her guilt. All I know is that she's a woman at the end of her tether who's been handed one of the rawest of raw deals. That the world's been hard on her won't excuse her. We can't alter the world over night. If she's caught, as she may be at any moment, it'll be all up with her. I don't care what she's done or how much I lose by it, I'm not going to stand by and see her taken."