"Ah, child! Do you think we never think of that? You wrong me--you wrong
my Order. There are many besides myself who turn over that terrible
problem as despairingly as you can ever do. As far as in us lies, we
strive to remedy its evil; the uttermost effort can do but little, but
that little is only lessened--fearfully lessened--whenever Class is
arrayed against Class by that blind antagonism which animates yourself."
Cigarette's intelligence was too rapid not to grasp the truths conveyed
by these words; but she was in no mood to acknowledge them.
"Nom de Dieu, Milady!" she swore in her teeth. "If you do turn over the
problem--you aristocrats--it is pretty work, no doubt! Just putting
the bits of a puzzle-ball together so long as the game pleases you, and
leaving the puzzle in chaos when you are tired! Oh, ha! I know how fine
ladies and fine gentlemen play at philanthropies! But I am a child of
the People, mark you; and I only see how birth is an angel that gives
such as you eternal sunlight and eternal summer, and how birth is a
devil that drives down the millions into a pit of darkness, of crime, of
ignorance, of misery, of suffering, where they are condemned before they
have opened their eyes to existence, where they are sentenced before
they have left their mothers' bosoms in infancy. You do not know what
that darkness is. It is night--it is ice--it is hell!"
Venetia Corona sighed wearily as she heard; pain had been so far from
her own life, and there was an intense eloquence in the low, deep words
that seemed to thrill through the stillness.
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