My conscience, in spite of your insistence that I am lost and depraved and full of sin, without any right to morality, is clear. My life has held value insofar as any human life holds value, including your own. For whence cometh value, if it not come from the heart beating blood through our loins? This is the place where what we call value exists, and I have it in abundance. My head is not bowed in shame. Let the whispers of my supposedly arrogant motives become a roar, because I remain undeterred by your determination to grind my pride to funeral ashes, even as the heart within me refuses to restrain its racing, beating hunger for beauty and life and reality for the wagging fingers of those who have given their own hearts away to a phantom.