“I knew it a good while ago.  I applied for one once, and it was refused when you said ’No’.”

For one who was supposed to be far above and beyond such emotional signallings, she blushed very prettily.  Which merely proves that one may be a diplomaed sociologist with a burning zeal for alleviating the miseries of a sodden world, without having parted with the primitive sex impulse.

“I am willing to try to help you now,” she said, half hesitating; “if only you won’t try to drag me over into the field of sentiment.  It was just a bit of boyish rage—­fine enough in its way, but foolish—­your sending that telegram to Mr. McVickar.  Can’t you recall it?”

“No; not now.”

“Then you must do the next best thing:  tell him you have reconsidered.”

“But I haven’t reconsidered; I can’t and won’t stand in with the corruption and bribery that is going on all around me!” he objected indignantly.

“Of course you can’t; and you mustn’t.  But the true reformer doesn’t drop things and run away.  You must stay in and fight—­fight harder than you ever have before, Evan.  If you can’t do it for the sake of the larger right, then you must do it for your own sake.  Can’t you see the open door before you?”

“I can see and hear and feel when the door is slammed in my face,” was the qualifying rejoinder.  “How can I go on preaching the gospel of cleanness and fair dealing, when I know that all this crooked work is going on behind my back?  What will the people of this State say to me and about me when the crookedness comes to light?”

“Ah!” she said; “that is just where you begin to grow one-sided.  You must go on preaching the gospel, but that is only half of the battle.  The other half is to be big enough and strong enough and insistent enough to make the thing itself agree with the gospel.  I fully believe you lost your best helper when you refused to join hands with your father.  You don’t believe that, so we’ll let it go.  You have gone your own way, choosing what seemed to you to be the better opportunity.  Evan, you can’t turn back; you’ve simply got to go on and wring success out of apparent failure!”

Blount drew a deep breath and sat up in his chair.  There was no mistaking the light in Patricia’s eyes now; the pure flame of which it was the visible radiance is the torch which has kindled the beacon fires on all the heights since the world began.

“If I had only my own people—­the railroad people—­to knock down and drag out,” he was beginning, but she broke in warmly: 

“You think you have your father against you, too; I don’t believe it, but you do.  Very well; then you must compel him, as well as the others.  Be a big man, Evan; be the biggest man in the State until you have proved that one man with a righteous cause is better than ten thousand without it.”

Blount got up and stood with his back to the dying embers of the tiny fire, and if he put his hands behind him it was because the passionate impulse to break down all the barriers was twitching in every fibre of him.