Was it true, what they said of him,—­that success had already gone to his head, that the best way to get rid of him was to give him a political rope with which he might hang himself?  Or was there some solid foundation of fact in his blustering assumption of power?  Was he actually a force that would have to be reckoned with in the future?  From a mass of confused impressions Stephen could gather nothing clearly except his inability to form a definite opinion of the man.  On the one side was the weight of prejudice, of preconceived judgment; and on the other he could place only the effect of a personal magnetism which was as real and as intangible as light or colour.

“Do you think that is possible?” he asked sceptically.  “In a democracy like ours is any man so strong that he can stand alone?”

“Well, of course he is not alone as long as he has the support of the majority.”

“You may have this support—­I neither affirm nor deny it—­but upon what does it rest?  What do you offer the people that is better than the principles or the promises of the old parties?  I heard you speak once, but you did not answer this question—­to my mind the only question that is vital.  You talked a great deal about humanizing industry—­a vague phrase which might mean anything or nothing, since humanity covers all the vices as well as all the virtues of the race.  Benham could use that phrase as oratorically as you do, for it rolls easily off the tongue and commits one to nothing.”

Vetch’s face lost suddenly its rigid gravity, as if he had suffered a rush of energy to the brain.  His eyes became blue again, and as keen as the blade of a knife.

“I believe, and the people who are with me believe, that I can make something out of the muddle if I am given a chance,” he replied.  “Oh, I know that the reactionaries are in the saddle now—­that they have been ever since they had the war as an excuse to mount!  But I know also that you can no more drive out by law the spirit of liberalism from the American mind than you can drive out nature with a pitchfork.  For a little while you may think you have got the better of it; but it will crop out in spite of you.  Now, I am a part of returning nature, of the inevitable rebound toward the spirit of liberalism.  In the thought of the people who voted for me, I stand for the indestructible common sense of the American mind.  I am one of the first signs of the new times.”

“And you believe that you prove this,” asked Stephen frankly, “by turning over your power of appointment to a group of self-interested politicians?  You show your ability to govern by evading the first requirement of good government—­that there should be honest and able men in control of public offices?”

A flicker came and went in the blue eyes.  “I told you the other day,” answered Vetch in a low voice, “that I used the tools at my command, and I tell you now that I am sometimes forced to use rotten ones.  People say that I am an opportunist; but who has ever discovered any other policy that deals with life so completely?  They say also that I am without public conscience—­another name for opinions that have crystallized into prejudices.  The truth is that the end for which I work seems to me vastly more important than the methods I use or the instruments that I employ.”