"You can, if you think
best."
She recognized a familiar emergence of granite in his voice and aspect
and cried out on it passionately, "Now, _Neale_!"
He knew perfectly well what this meant, without further words from her.
They looked at each other, an unspoken battle going on with extreme
rapidity between them, over ground intimately familiar. In the middle of
this, she broke violently into words, quite sure that he would know at
which point she took it up. "You carry that idea to perfectly impossible
lengths, Neale. Don't you ever admit that we ought to try to make other
people act the way we think best, even when we _know_ we're right and
they're wrong?"
"Yes," admitted her husband, "I should think we were bound to. If we
ever _were_ sure we were right and they wrong."
She gave the impression of vibrating with impatience and cried out,
"That's pettifogging. Of course there are times when we are sure.
Suppose you saw a little child about to take hold of the red-hot end of
a poker?"
"A child is different," he opposed her. "All grown-ups are responsible
for all children. I suppose I'd keep him from taking hold of it. And yet
I'm not dead sure I'd be right. If I thought he was only just going to
touch it, to see if it really would burn him as people had told him, I
guess I'd let him.
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