“Everywhere.  In you, in me, in Nellie, in men like Ford and George and Harry, in places you never dream of, in ways nobody knows but himself.  He is moulding the world as a potter moulds clay.  It frightens me, sometimes.  I open a new book and there are Geisner’s very ideas.  I see a picture, an illustrated paper, and there is Geisner’s hand passed to another.  I was at a new opera the other night and I could hardly believe my ears; it seemed as though Geisner was playing.  From some out of the way corner of the earth comes news of a great strike; then, on top of it, from another corner, the bubbling of a gathering rising; and I can feel that Geisner is guiding countless millions to some unseen goal, safe in his work because none know him.  He is a man!  He seeks no reward, despises fame, instils no evil, claims no leadership.  Only he burns his thoughts into men’s hearts, the god-like thoughts that in his misery have come to him, and every true man who hears him from that moment has no way but Geisner’s way.  A word from him and the whole world would rock with Revolution.  Only he does not say it.  He thinks of the to-morrow.  We all suffer, and he has passed through such suffering that he is branded with it, body and soul.  But he has faced it and conquered it and he understands that we all must face it and conquer it before those who follow after us can be freed from it.  ’We must first show that Socialism is possible,’ he said to me two years ago.  And I think he hoped, Ned, that some day you would show it.”

“You talk like Geisner,” said Ned, watching her animated face.  He had come to her for comfort and upon his sad heart her words were like balm.  Afterwards, they strengthened the life purpose that came to him.

“Of course.  So do you when you think of him.  So does everybody.  His wonderful power all lies in his impressing his ideas on everybody he meets.  Strong is a baby beside him when you consider the difference in their means.”

“I wish Strong was on our side, just the same.”

“Why?  The Strongs find the flint on which the Geisners strike the steel.  Do you think for a single moment that the average rich man has courage enough or brains enough to drive the people to despair as this Strong will do?”

“Yes, monopoly will either kill or cure.”

“It will cure.  This Strong is annihilating the squatters as fast as he’s trying to annihilate the unions.  I hear them talking sometimes, or their wives, which is the same thing.  They fairly hate him.  He’s doing more than any man to kill the old employer and to turn the owners of capital into mere idle butterflies, or, if you like it better, into swine wallowing in luxury, living on dividends.  Not that they hate that,” went on Connie, contemptuously.  “They’re an idle, vicious set, taken all round, at the best.  But he’s ruining a lot of the old landocrats and naturally they don’t like it.  Of course, very few of them like his style or his wife’s.”