It seemed monstrous, impossible, that our whole society was based upon blood.  And yet there was Jackson.  I could not get away from him.  Constantly my thought swung back to him as the compass to the Pole.  He had been monstrously treated.  His blood had not been paid for in order that a larger dividend might be paid.  And I knew a score of happy complacent families that had received those dividends and by that much had profited by Jackson’s blood.  If one man could be so monstrously treated and society move on its way unheeding, might not many men be so monstrously treated?  I remembered Ernest’s women of Chicago who toiled for ninety cents a week, and the child slaves of the Southern cotton mills he had described.  And I could see their wan white hands, from which the blood had been pressed, at work upon the cloth out of which had been made my gown.  And then I thought of the Sierra Mills and the dividends that had been paid, and I saw the blood of Jackson upon my gown as well.  Jackson I could not escape.  Always my meditations led me back to him.

Down in the depths of me I had a feeling that I stood on the edge of a precipice.  It was as though I were about to see a new and awful revelation of life.  And not I alone.  My whole world was turning over.  There was my father.  I could see the effect Ernest was beginning to have on him.  And then there was the Bishop.  When I had last seen him he had looked a sick man.  He was at high nervous tension, and in his eyes there was unspeakable horror.  From the little I learned I knew that Ernest had been keeping his promise of taking him through hell.  But what scenes of hell the Bishop’s eyes had seen, I knew not, for he seemed too stunned to speak about them.

Once, the feeling strong upon me that my little world and all the world was turning over, I thought of Ernest as the cause of it; and also I thought, “We were so happy and peaceful before he came!” And the next moment I was aware that the thought was a treason against truth, and Ernest rose before me transfigured, the apostle of truth, with shining brows and the fearlessness of one of Gods own angels, battling for the truth and the right, and battling for the succor of the poor and lonely and oppressed.  And then there arose before me another figure, the Christ!  He, too, had taken the part of the lowly and oppressed, and against all the established power of priest and pharisee.  And I remembered his end upon the cross, and my heart contracted with a pang as I thought of Ernest.  Was he, too, destined for a cross?—­he, with his clarion call and war-noted voice, and all the fine man’s vigor of him!

And in that moment I knew that I loved him, and that I was melting with desire to comfort him.  I thought of his life.  A sordid, harsh, and meagre life it must have been.  And I thought of his father, who had lied and stolen for him and been worked to death.  And he himself had gone into the mills when he was ten!  All my heart seemed bursting with desire to fold my arms around him, and to rest his head on my breast—­his head that must be weary with so many thoughts; and to give him rest—­just rest—­and easement and forgetfulness for a tender space.