With difficulty I asked him to
explain himself, and it was with terror that I listened when he did.
He may have been made to ask, but I was not made to hear such words. He
saw my inner rebellion and stopped in mid-harangue. He has never forgiven
me the disappointment of that moment. I have never forgiven him for
making me sign away my independence, my holdings, and my life to a Cause
I did not thoroughly understand."
"Your life?" echoed Ransom, roused to involuntary expression by this
word.
"Surely not your life," echoed the lawyer, with the slow credulity of the
matter-of-fact man.
"I have said it," she murmured, her head falling on her breast. At which
token of weakness, Hazen stirred and took the words from her mouth.
"The organization," said he, "is a secret one and its code is
self-sacrifice. To the band of noble men and women, of whose integrity
and far-reaching purpose you can judge little from the whinings of a
love-sick girl, life and all personal gratifications are as dust in the
balance against the preservation and advancement of universal happiness
and the great Cause. I thought my sister, young as she was, sufficiently
great-minded to comprehend this and sufficiently great-hearted to do the
society's bidding with joy at the sacrifice. But I found her lacking,
and--" He stopped and almost lost himself again, but roused and cried
with sudden fire, "Tell what I did, Georgian.
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