She took a seat on the divan before she spoke again. "Oh, women are such posers. You think I am quite heartless, don't you?" "No, I don't think that, but I do think you are a little unjust to these people, whose thought you have made very little effort to comprehend." "Why should I? They are not worth while." "Do you speak now as an artist?" he asked, gravely. "But they are so gross and so cruel!" "I don't deny but they are, sometimes, both gross and cruel, but so are civilized men. The scalp-dance no more represents them than a bayonet charge represents us. It isn't just to condemn all for the faults of a few. You wouldn't destroy servant-girls because some of them are ugly and untidy, would you?" "The cases are not precisely similar." "I'll admit that, but the point is here: as an artist you can't afford to dispose of a race on the testimony of their hereditary enemies. You wouldn't expect a sympathetic study of the Greek by the Saracen, would you?" "It isn't that so much, but they are so perfectly unimportant. They have no use in the world. What does it matter if they die, or don't?" "Perhaps not so much to them; but to me, if I can help them and fail to do it, it matters a great deal. We can't afford to be unjust, for our own sake. The bearer of the torch should not burn, he should illumine." "I don't understand that," she said, genuinely searching for his meaning. "There is where you disappoint me," he retorted. "Most women quiver with altruistic passion the moment they see helpless misery. If you saw a kitten fall into a well what would you do?" "I should certainly try to save it." "Your heart would bleed to see it drown?" She shivered at the thought. "Why, of course!" "And yet you can share in your father's exterminating vengeance as he sweeps ten thousand redmen into their graves?" "The case is different--the kitten never did any harm." "The wrong is by no means all on the redman's side. But even if it were, Christ said, 'Love them that hate you,' and as a Christian nation we should not go out in vindictive warfare against even those who despitefully use us. I haven't a very high seat in the synagogue. I have a soldier's training for warfare, but I acknowledge the splendor of Christ's precepts and try to live up to them. I always liked Grant's position as regards the soldier. But more than that--I like these red people. They are a good deal more than rude men. It is a great pleasure to feel their trust and confidence in me. It touches me deeply to have them come and put their palms on me reverently, as though I were superhuman in wisdom, and say: 'Little Father, we are blind. We cannot see the way. Lead us and we will go.' At such times I feel that no other work in the world is so important. If human souls are valuable anywhere on earth they are valuable here; no selfish land-lust should blind us to see that."