Suppose
I admitted that. Are antagonistic ideas then to be reconciled more
easily--can they be cemented with blood and violence into that concord
which you proclaim to be so near?"
She looked at me searchingly with her clear grey eyes, without answering
my reasonable question--my obvious, my unanswerable question.
"It is inconceivable," I added, with something like annoyance.
"Everything is inconceivable," she said. "The whole world is
inconceivable to the strict logic of ideas. And yet the world exists to
our senses, and we exist in it. There must be a necessity superior to
our conceptions. It is a very miserable and a very false thing to belong
to the majority. We Russians shall find some better form of national
freedom than an artificial conflict of parties--which is wrong because
it is a conflict and contemptible because it is artificial. It is left
for us Russians to discover a better way."
Mrs. Haldin had been looking out of the window. She turned upon me the
almost lifeless beauty of her face, and the living benign glance of her
big dark eyes.
"That's what my children think," she declared.
"I suppose," I addressed Miss Haldin, "that you will be shocked if I
tell you that I haven't understood--I won't say a single word; I've
understood all the words.
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