like this. These people have rights."

"Rights!" repeated the unknown in a tone quite indescribable.
Then he added with a more open sneer: "Perhaps they also have
souls."

"They have lives!" said Turnbull, sternly; "that is quite enough
for me. I understood you to say that you thought life sacred."

"Yes, indeed!" cried his mentor with a sort of idealistic
animation. "Yes, indeed! Life is sacred--but lives are not
sacred. We are improving Life by removing lives. Can you, as a
free-thinker, find any fault in that?"

"Yes," said Turnbull with brevity.

"Yet you applaud tyrannicide," said the stranger with
rationalistic gaiety. "How inconsistent! It really comes to
this: You approve of taking away life from those to whom it is a
triumph and a pleasure. But you will not take away life from
those to whom it is a burden and a toil."

Turnbull rose to his feet in the car with considerable
deliberation, but his face seemed oddly pale. The other went on
with enthusiasm.

"Life, yes, Life is indeed sacred!" he cried; "but new lives for
old! Good lives for bad! On that very place where now there
sprawls one drunken wastrel of a pavement artist more or less
wishing he were dead--on that very spot there shall in the future