y get it. They distil themselves
with nitroglycerine, all the lot of them, out of very love. It's the
lie that kills. If we want hate, let us have it--death, murder,
torture, violent destruction--let us have it: but not in the name of
love. But I abhor humanity, I wish it was swept away. It could go, and
there would be no ABSOLUTE loss, if every human being perished
tomorrow. The reality would be untouched. Nay, it would be better. The
real tree of life would then be rid of the most ghastly, heavy crop of
Dead Sea Fruit, the intolerable burden of myriad simulacra of people,
an infinite weight of mortal lies.'

'So you'd like everybody in the world destroyed?' said Ursula.

'I should indeed.'

'And the world empty of people?'

'Yes truly. You yourself, don't you find it a beautiful clean thought,
a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting
up?'

The pleasant sincerity of his voice made Ursula pause to consider her
own proposition. And really it WAS attractive: a clean, lovely,
humanless world. It was the REALLY desirable. Her heart hesitated, and
exulted. But still, she was dissatisfied with HIM.

'But,' she objected, 'you'd be dead yourself, so what good would it do
you?'

'I would die like a shot, to know that the earth would really be
cleaned of all the people. It is the most beautiful and freeing
thought. Then there would NEVER be another foul humanity created, for a
universal defilement.'

'No,' said Ursula, 'there would be nothing.'

'What! Nothing? Just because humanity was wiped out? You flatter
yourself. There'd be everything.'

'But how, if there were no people?'

'Do you think that creation depends on MAN! It merely doesn't. There
are the trees and the grass and birds. I much prefer to think of the
lark rising up in the morning upon a human-less world. Man is a
mistake, he must go. There is the grass, and hares and adders, and the
unseen hosts, actual angels that go about freely when a dirty humanity
doesn't interrupt them--and good pure-tissued demons: very nice.'

It pleased Ursula, what he said, pleased her very much, as a phantasy.
Of course it was only a pleasant fancy. She herself knew too well the
actuality of humanity, its hideous actuality. She knew it could not
disappear so cleanly and conveniently. It had a long way to go yet, a
long and hideous way. Her subtle, feminine, demoniacal soul knew it
well.

'If only man was swept off the face of the earth, crea