The
lizards which had fled their coming crept out again to bask in the
sunshine. The soldier-guide and guard scrabbled about with his
black fingers in the ruinous and rifled tomb of Christophe in a
search for some saleable memento. . . .
Benham sat musing in silence. The thought of deliberate cruelty was
always an actual physical distress to him. He sat bathed in the
dreamy afternoon sunlight and struggled against the pictures that
crowded into his mind, pictures of men aghast at death, and of fear-
driven men toiling in agony, and of the shame of extorted obedience
and of cringing and crawling black figures, and the defiance of
righteous hate beaten down under blow and anguish. He saw eyes
alight with terror and lips rolled back in agony, he saw weary
hopeless flight before striding proud destruction, he saw the poor
trampled mangled dead, and he shivered in his soul. . . .
He hated Christophe and all that made Christophe; he hated pride,
and then the idea came to him that it is not pride that makes
Christophes but humility.
There is in the medley of man's composition, deeper far than his
superficial working delusion that he is a separated self-seeking
individual, an instinct for cooperation and obedience.
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