“And so you elected to be one of the rest? I congratulate you. A most laudable decision, I am sure,” she said contemptuously. “It would indeed have been a pity if you had gone short of food in order to save the lives of a mere score of children; tiny, helpless little things that can’t do more than cry as they starve.” “You don’t understand,” I repeated. “There was no chance of saving them in any case. They were doomed from the start. All we did was to ensure that _somebody_ would survive. If the food had been evenly distributed, we should all have died; but your uncle laid his plans to save millions of people. Surely you can see that?” She thought for a moment; and then attacked in a fresh direction. “Who gave you the right to choose among them? You seem to think you are a demi-god with the power of life and death in your hands. How could _you_ take the responsibility of the choice? And how could you bear to save yourself when you knew other men, and perhaps better men, had to die? I can’t understand you. You’re so different from what I thought you were. Somehow all my ideals seem to be breaking. You and Uncle Stanley were the two finest men I had met. I never dreamed for a moment that you would turn out to have feet of clay. And now....” I tried hard to put our case before her. I explained the state of things at the outbreak of the Famine. I gave her figures to prove that Nordenholt had only worked to save what he could from the disaster. It was all of no avail. I think that the picture of the starving children filled her mind to the exclusion of almost everything else; and that she hardly listened to what I said. Once she whispered to herself, “Poor little mites,” just when I thought I had caught her attention at last. I gave it up in the end. She looked away across the loch, where the first stars were lighting up behind the hills; and we stood in silence, so close in space, so remote from each other in our thoughts. At last she spoke again. “Still I don’t understand it all. I see your view; but I can’t share it. It seems so cold-blooded, so horrible. But I can’t understand you, just when I thought I knew you through and through. Tell me, how could you talk of Fata Morgana and all our dreams when you _knew_ that this terrible thing was happening? That’s what I don’t grasp.”