"
"You will see," said Ostrog, with a forced smile that would brush these
difficult questions aside. "I have not roused the force to destroy
myself--trust me."
"I wonder," said Graham.
Ostrog stared.
"_Must_ the world go this way?" said Graham with his emotions at the
speaking point. "Must it indeed go in this way? Have all our hopes
been vain?"
"What do you mean?" said Ostrog. "Hopes?"
"I come from a democratic age. And I find an aristocratic tyranny!"
"Well,--but you are the chief tyrant."
Graham shook his head.
"Well," said Ostrog, "take the general question. It is the way that
change has always travelled. Aristocracy, the prevalence of the best--the
suffering and extinction of the unfit, and so to better things."
"But aristocracy! those people I met--"
"Oh! not _those_!" said Ostrog. "But for the most part they go to their
death. Vice and pleasure! They have no children. That sort of stuff will
die out. If the world keeps to one road, that is, if there is no turning
back. An easy road to excess, convenient Euthanasia for the pleasure
seekers singed in the flame, that is the way to improve the race!"
"Pleasant extinction," said Graham. "Yet--." He thought for an instant.
"There is that other thing--the Crowd, the great mass of poor men. Will
that die out? That will not die out. And it suffers, its suffering is a
force that even you--"
Ostrog moved impatiently, and when he spoke, he spoke rather less evenly
than before.
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