"Did you believe it was wrong to honor them so?"

"Yes. I thought it must be wrong."

"Then if it was wrong to honor them in that way, and if they were of kin
to the Fiend, they could be dangerous company for you and the other
children, couldn't they?"

"I suppose so--yes, I think so."

He studied a minute, and I judged he was going to spring his trap, and he
did. He said:

"Then the matter stands like this. They were banned creatures, of fearful
origin; they could be dangerous company for the children. Now give me a
rational reason, dear, if you can think of any, why you call it a wrong
to drive them into banishment, and why you would have saved them from it.
In a word, what loss have you suffered by it?"

How stupid of him to go and throw his case away like that! I could have
boxed his ears for vexation if he had been a boy. He was going along all
right until he ruined everything by winding up in that foolish and fatal
way. What had she lost by it! Was he never going to find out what kind of
a child Joan of Arc was? Was he never going to learn that things which
merely concerned her own gain or loss she cared nothing about? Could he
never get the simple fact into his head that the sure way and the only
way to rouse her up and set her on fire was to show her where some other
person was going to suffer wrong or hurt or loss? Why, he had gone and
set a trap for himself--that was all he had accomplished.