"But I've
been thinking it must be that that's at the bottom of it all; and that is
why God lets there be weak things--children and little animals and men
and women in pain, that we feel sorry for, so that people like you and
Robert and so many others are willing to give up all your lives to
helping them. And that is what He wants."
"Perhaps God cannot help there being weak things," answered Joan.
"Perhaps He, too, is sorry for them."
"It comes to the same thing, doesn't it, dear?" she answered. "They are
there, anyhow. And that is how He knows those who are willing to serve
Him: by their being pitiful."
They fell into a silence. Joan found herself dreaming.
Yes, it was true. It must have been the beginning of all things. Man,
pitiless, deaf, blind, groping in the darkness, knowing not even himself.
And to her vision, far off, out of the mist, he shaped himself before
her: that dim, first standard-bearer of the Lord, the man who first felt
pity. Savage, brutish, dumb--lonely there amid the desolation, staring
down at some hurt creature, man or beast it mattered not, his dull eyes
troubled with a strange new pain he understood not.
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