“Because there are some people, Lieutenant, who can only find their happiness in hell.”
“Martyrs.”
“Not martyrs, precisely.”
“Just what, then, precisely?”
“It’s a sharing, if you wish—sort of a sharing of torture.”
Vague—vague. Lieutenant Valcour felt quite convinced that he would shortly begin to gibber, if the mysteries of hearts, of minds that he had dipped into during the past few hours, did not soon coalesce within the mould of reason. He began to envy his sterner compatriots on the force who confined their processes to the comfortable fields of hard, cold facts—the “did you at five-forty-five this afternoon place the silver teaspoon on the pantry shelf, or did you not?” sort of facts. He conceded that their wholesome, plein-air tactics were quite right, and that his own, in spite of their usually successful results, were