"Huh!"--the doctor was feeling too deeply to be conscious of the rudeness
in the scoff. "So you figure it out like that--do you? And you get
some satisfaction out of that way of looking at it? The scheme of things
is very fine, but he must pay the penalty of his own oversight,
weakness--carelessness--whatever you choose to call it. Well, I don't
think I care much about a system that fixes its penalties in that
particular way. When I see men every day who violate every natural law
and don't pay any heavier penalty than an inconvenience, when I see
useless pieces of flesh and bone slapping nature in the face and not
getting more than a mild little slap in return, and then when I see the
biggest, most useful man I have ever known paying as a penalty his life's
work--oh Lord--that's rot! I have some hymn singing ancestors myself, and
they left me a tendency to want to believe in something or other, so I
had fine notions about the economy of nature--poetry of science. But this
makes rather a joke of that, too--don't you think?" He paused, and
Georgia could see the hot beating in his temples and his throat.
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