(The situation has now become one which the friendly Tumulty would like to control, but cannot.  As a “soul-stirring revelation of character” he finds it, no doubt, immensely interesting; but to be thus made Father Confessor of the man whom he has followed with humble and dog-like devotion, knocks the bottom out of his world altogether.  Moreover, he has received “domestic orders,” and is not properly obeying them; and so, dominated by the stronger will, he glances apprehensively, now and again, toward the door, hoping that it may open and bring relief, but himself sits and does nothing.  Meanwhile, insistent and remorseless at self-examination, the Ex-President continues to wear himself out.)

When a man comes really to himself, Tumulty—­sees clearly within—­does it help him toward seeing also what lies outside, beyond, and ahead—­make him more sure that, as regards others, he has done right?  I don’t know—­I would give my life to know—­if what I did, when all else had failed, was best.  The political forces, prejudices, antagonisms, the powers of evil around me, have been so dubiously deceiving and dark, that I do not know now whether to have been uncompromisingly true to principle would have done any good.  Perhaps after to-day I shall know better; perhaps only now have I become qualified to judge—­a free man at last.  Only in the secrecy of my own heart—­now finally removed from all the interests, ambitions, fears, which gather about a man’s public career—­I do most earnestly and humbly pray that in this one thing I did right—­not to discredit myself too utterly in the world’s eyes, so that that, at least, might live.

TUMULTY (doing his best).  It will live, Governor!

EX-PRES.  It may.  But in what hands have I had to leave it?  To men who have no faith in it, to men who dislike it, to men who will try persistently, sedulously, day in, day out, to turn it back to their own selfish ends.  There, in those hands, its fate will lie—­perhaps for a generation to come.  And it is only by faith in the common people, not in their politicians, that I dare look forward and hope that the instrument—­ blunt and one-sided though it be now—­may yet become mighty and two-edged and sharp, a sword in the hand of a giant—­of one whose balances are those of justice, not of power.  But I shan’t see it, Tumulty; it won’t be in my day.  If America had come in, I should!  That was the keystone of my policy:  that gone, my policy has failed.  That was my faith—­is still; for faith can live on when policies lie dead.  Think what it might have been!  America, with that weapon to her hand, could have shaped the world’s future, made it a democracy of free nations—­image and superscription no longer Caesar’s—­but Man’s.  That—­that was what I saw!

TUMULTY.  Perhaps they saw it too, Governor.  If they did, it might help to explain matters.