GERALD. The older _I_ get, father, the more such trifles stick in my
throat.
MR. BARLOW. Ah, it is an increasingly irritable disposition in you,
my child. Nothing costs so bitterly, in the end, as a stubborn pride.
MRS. BARLOW. Except a stubborn humility--and that will cost you more.
Avoid humility, beware of stubborn humility: it degrades. Hark,
Gerald--fight! When the occasion comes, fight! If it's one against
five thousand, fight! Don't give them your heart on a dish! Never!
If they want to eat your heart out, make them fight for it, and then
give it them poisoned at last, poisoned with your own blood.--What do
you say, young woman?
ANABEL. Is it for me to speak, Mrs. Barlow?
MRS. BARLOW. Weren't you asked?
ANABEL. Certainly I would NEVER give the world my heart on a dish.
But can't there ever be peace--real peace?
MRS. BARLOW. No--not while there is devilish enmity.
MR. BARLOW. You are wrong, dear, you are wrong. The peace can come,
the peace that passeth all understanding.
MRS. BARLOW. That there is already between me and Almighty God. I am
at peace with the God that made me, and made me proud. With men who
humiliate me I am at war. Between me and the shameful humble there
is war to the end, though they are millions and I am one. I hate the
people. Between my race and them and my children--for ever war, for
ever and ever.
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