He should be as heroic a figure
as a general. But as I tell you, at the moment, when Rounds said, "when
I killed him," I was shocked. I had never before realized how violence
was a thing apart from my life. I had looked at the representation of
murder on the stage. I had read novels with murder as the mainspring. I
had seen shootings and stabbings in moving pictures. Yet, not until that
moment had I any suspicion that violence was so rare a thing and that
most of our lives are far, far removed from it. Actually, I have never
struck a man, nor has any man ever lifted his hand against me in anger.
It was, therefore, a startling thing to hear Rounds confess to having
killed a fellow man. It was awesome. And yet, let me say, that at once I
was possessed of a great desire to learn all about it, and down in my
heart I feared that he would decide he had said something that he should
not have said, and would either deny his statement or modify it in some
way. I wanted to hear all the details. I was hugely interested. Was it
morbidity? Then I came to myself after what was a shock, and awoke to
the fact that he was talking in his quiet, even way.
"But those Tlingas held the belief, and that was all there was to it,"
he was saying.
I came to attention and said, "Of course.
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