nable, idea obtains widely among respectable,
sentimental, so-called religious persons, regarding those who are the
victims of disfiguring accident, or, like myself, are physically
disgraced from birth. Because we have been deprived of our natural
rights, because we have so abominably little, we are expected to be
slavishly grateful for the contemptible pittance that we have. Because,
slothfully, by His neglect, or, wantonly, for His amusement, the
Creator has tortured us, maiming, distorting us up as a laughing-stock
before all man and womankind--because He has played a ghastly and
brutal practical joke on us, fixing the marks of low comedy in our
living flesh and bone--therefore we, forsooth, are to be more pious,
more clean-living, temperate, and discreet than the rest--to bow
amiably beneath the cross, gratefully to kiss the rod! Those
irregularities of conduct which are smiled at, and taken for granted,
in a man made after the normal, comely fashion, become a scandal in the
case of a poor, unhappy devil like me, at which good people hold up
their hands in horror. Faugh!--I tell you I'm sick of such cowardly
cant. A pretty example the Almighty's set me of justice and mercy!
Handsome encouragement He has given me to be virtuous and sober! Much I
have for which to praise His holy name! Arbitrarily, without excuse, or
faintest show of antecedent reason, He has elected to curse. And the
curse will cling forever and ever, till they lay me in a coffin nearly
half as short again as that of any other man, and leave the hideousness
of my deformity to be obliterated and purged at last--eaten away by the
worms in the dark."

Richard stretched out his hands, palms upward.

"And in return for all this shall I bless? No, indeed--no, thank you.
Not even towards God Almighty Himself will I play the part of
lick-spittle and sycophant. I have fine enough stuff in me, let alone
the energy begotten by the flagrance of His injustice, to take higher
grounds with Him than that. I will break what men hold to be His laws,
wherever and whenever I can--I will make hay of His so-called natural
and moral order, just as often as I get the chance. I will curse, and
again, curse back."

The speaker's voice was deep and resonant, filling the whole room. His
utterance deliberate and unshaken. His face dark with the malign beauty
of implacable hatred. Hearing him, seeing him thus, Katherine Calmady's
fortitude forsook her. She ceased to distinguis