Andreas had watched the scene; a surge of fury had brought the blood to
his face, and, stirred by great and genuine emotion, he broke out:

"There--there you see the locusts which destroy my garden--the hail which
ruins my crops! It falls on all that bears the name of humanity--on me
and you. Happy, girl? None of us can ever be happy till the Kingdom
shall arise for which the fullness of the time is come."

"But they dropped the column; I saw them myself," urged Melissa.

"Did you, indeed?" said Andreas. "Well, well, the whip, no doubt, can
revive exhausted powers. And that is how you look upon such deeds!--you,
who would not crush a worm in the garden, think this is right and just!"

It suddenly struck Melissa that Andreas, too, had once been a slave, and
the feeling that she had hurt him grieved her to the heart. She had
often heard him speak sternly and gravely, but never in scorn as he did
now, and that, too, distressed her; and as she could not think of the
right thing to say in atonement for the wrong she had done, she could
only look up with tearful entreaty and murmur, "Forgive me!"

"I have nothing to forgive," he replied in an altered tone. "You have
grown up among the unjust who are now in power. How should you see more
clearly than they, who all walk in darkness? But if the light should be
shown to you by one to whom it hath been revealed, it would not be
extinguished again.--Does it not seem a beautiful thing to you to live
among none but brethren and sisters, instead of among oppressors and
their scourged victims; or is there no place in a woman's soul for the
holy wrath that came upon Moses the Hebrew? But who would ever have