THE ORDEAL OF IDA PENDRAGON
”He is like a black leopard,” she purred.
“Is anything in
the world so beautiful as that lithe black body ? ”
”I have seen blood in the sunlight on a bull's shoulder,"
replied Rolles.
“ I love to see the pure animal beat the mere brute.
White
men ought not to fight: they ought to think, and do lovely
physical things, things gracious and of good report."
“Ida! my Ida!
Could you see your nostrils twitching!
I can imagine you fighting with all their fierceness, incapable
of keeping to the rules of boxing.”
“ Ι hate you,” she said.
“ In everything you see—"
“ Your lust of blood," he answered gravely.
“ It is true," said Ida slowly.
“There is no light of battle
in your eye.
You see it as a picture."
“ It is a hieroglyph."
“ But it is a fight
! "
“ I do not believe in fights.
I only believe in beauty.”
" Oh how true, how right you are!
How noble] "
She
hid her face in her hands and began to cry to herself.
“ I see]
I see!
That is how God must see the Universe, or He could
never tolerate such cruelty, such idiotcy, ineptitude.”
“ Exactly.
Suppose now that the world is only symbol——
I had rather say sacrament—suppose for example that all these
stars swimming in boundless æther are but corpuscles in the
blood of some toy terrier of the Creator.”
" You frighten me.
I don’t want to suppose.”
”Think of the eternal battles of haemoglobin, oxyhaemo-
globin, carboxyhaemoglobin in our blood.
It is the same idea.
Do we express sympathy for the fallen?
Havewe a stop—the-
war party?
On the contrary, we take good care that these
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