facts.  The ‘finality’ of this compromise, its final issue, will be established by conditions with which laws or their enforcement have little to do.  Yet statesmen try to solve such a question by politics.  I myself at one time thought it could endure—­but only if all the blacks were bought, paid for and deported, to make room for those who come at no cost to us.  I thought for a time it could be done.  I have tried to do it.  I have failed.  I do not think others will follow in my attempt.”

“We have not undervalued, Madam, either the brilliance or the profundity of your own active intellect!  What you say is of interest.  We already have followed with profound interest your efforts.  Your words here justify our concern in meeting you.  This is perhaps the first time in our history when a woman has been asked to meet those most concerned in even so informal an assemblage as this, at precisely this place.”

There were gravity and dignity in his words.  The majesty of a government, the dignity of even the simplest and most democratic form of government, the unified needs, the concentrated wish of many millions expressed in the persons of a few,—­these are the things which can not fail to impress even the most ignorant and insensitive as deeply as the most extravagant pageantry of the proudest monarchy.  They did not fail to impress Josephine St. Auban, brilliant and audacious thinker though she was, and used to the pomp of Old World courts.  At once she felt almost a sense of fright, of terror.  The silence of these other gentlemen, so able to hold their peace, came to her mind with the impress of some mighty power.  She half shrank back into her chair.

“Madam, you have no need of fear,” broke in the deep voice of the gentleman who had escorted her thither, and who now observed her perturbation.  “We shall not harm you—­I think not even criticize you seriously.  Our wish is wholly for your own good.”

“Assuredly,” resumed the first speaker.  “That is the wish of all my friends here.  But let us come now to the point.  Madam, to be frank with you, you have, as we just have said, been much concerned of late with attempts at the colonization and deportation of negroes from this country.  You at least have not hesitated to undertake a work which has daunted the imagination of our ablest minds.  Precisely such was once my own plan.  My counselors dissuaded me.  I lacked your courage.”

“There seemed no other way,” she broke in hurriedly, her convictions conquering her timidity.  “I wanted so much to do something—­not alone for these blacks—­but something for the good of America, the good of the world.  And I failed, to-day.”

“The work of the Colonization Society has gone on for many years,” gently insisted the first speaker, raising a hand, “and made it no serious complications.  Your own work has been much bolder, and, to be frank, there have been complications.  Oh, we do not criticize you.  On the contrary, we have asked your presence here that we might understandingly converse on these things to which you have given so much attention.”