"You know, you impress me tremendously. You've made me intensely interested in these matters. I've not thought about these things before. I've stood apart from public questions--they haven't seemed to be any affair of mine. But there's where we make a mistake. Every question that concerns one's country concerns the individual. The honour of the Empire is in our keeping. Men and women don't bear that in mind sufficiently; we ought to have it in mind continually. It should be as much to us as personal honour, which most of us rate highly. Take this country, for instance, where old wrongs rankle and old wounds remain unhealed, it's people like yourself who have the power to effect the healing process. You could do it--you, and others in this land which is so vitally important a part of the Empire. There is no wound of that nature which cannot be healed." He felt that he had not touched her. She remained manifestly unmoved and outside it all. She lived with the memories of the past. "You may heal wounds and there will remain a scar," she answered. "And for amputation cases there is no remedy." "You mean," he said, "that in your alienated sympathies your patriotism has suffered amputation? Fellow-countrywoman, I am not going to believe that. You have tucked it away out of sight, and are cheating yourself into believing it isn't there because you no longer see it. Well, I'll tell you what you've done for me." He smiled suddenly. "You have called my patriotism into being. I'd forgotten I had so precious a possession till you showed it to me." "I!" she said, amazed. "You... and your daughter. For the greater part of last night I lay awake thinking over Miss Krige's unpalatable history lesson. I don't know enough about these things to judge whether it was altogether accurate, but I imagine she has got hold of facts--though, of course, there are two ways of presenting facts, and she is obviously biassed. But, anyway, what she said helped me to see the Dutch point of view, and it is essential for the complete understanding of a subject to see the view of either side; there is admittedly always something to be said for both. And she taught me besides that there are two principles which a great nation would do well to adopt--to forget the injuries it sustains, and to remember the wrongs which it inflicts upon others. In my opinion that is what we, as a nation, do. Aren't we proving that in the way in which we administer this Colony? The Dutch can suffer no injustice under the existing system of independent government."