She went bored to bed and being tired with her long ride
slept soundly all night. Her last sleep, I won't say of innocence--that
word would not render my exact meaning, because it has a special meaning
of its own--but I will say: of that ignorance, or better still, of that
unconsciousness of the world's ways, the unconsciousness of danger, of
pain, of humiliation, of bitterness, of falsehood. An unconsciousness
which in the case of other beings like herself is removed by a gradual
process of experience and information, often only partial at that, with
saving reserves, softening doubts, veiling theories. Her unconsciousness
of the evil which lives in the secret thoughts and therefore in the open
acts of mankind, whenever it happens that evil thought meets evil
courage; her unconsciousness was to be broken into with profane violence
with desecrating circumstances, like a temple violated by a mad, vengeful
impiety. Yes, that very young girl, almost no more than a child--this
was what was going to happen to her. And if you ask me, how, wherefore,
for what reason? I will answer you: Why, by chance! By the merest
chance, as things do happen, lucky and unlucky, terrible or tender,
important or unimportant; and even things which are neither, things so
completely neutral in character that you would wonder why they do happen
at all if you didn't know that they, too, carry in their insignificance
the seeds of further incalculable chances.
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