Thousands of men and women came and went and never read those words.  But boys read them, sitting on the stairs or leaning over the rail—­and their minds were carried on and on.  Old men, coming back after years to read them again, could testify what the words had meant to them in the field of high endeavor.

Jean had seen the painting many times, but now, standing on the upper gallery floor with Derry, it took on new meanings.  She saw a girl with hope in her eyes, a young mother with a babe at her breast; homely middle-aged women redeemed from the commonplace by that long gaze ahead of them; old women straining towards that sunset glow.  She saw, indeed, the Vision of Brave Women.  “If it could only be like that for me, Derry.  Do you see—­they go with their husbands, those women, and I must stay behind.”

“You will go with me, beloved, in spirit—­”

They fell into silence before the limitless vista.

And now more people were coming up the stairs, a drawling, familiar voice—­Alma Drew on the landing below.  With her a tall young man.  She was turning on him all her batteries of charm.

Alma passed the picture and did not look at it, she passed the lovers and did not see them.  And she was saying as she passed, “I don’t know why any man should be expected to fight.  I shouldn’t if I were a man.”

Jean drew a long breath.  “There, but for the grace of God, goes Jean McKenzie.”

Derry laughed.  “You were never like that.  Not for the least minute.  You were afraid for the man you loved.  It isn’t fear with Alma.”

But the thought of Alma did not trouble them long.  There was too much else in their world today.  As they walked through the historic halls, they had with them all the romance of the past—­and so Robert Fulton with his boats, Pere Marquette with his cross and beads, Frances Willard in her strange old-fashioned dress spoke to them of the dreams which certain inspired men and women have translated into action.

They talked of these things while they ate their lunch.  The black waiter, who knew Derry, hovered about them.  His freedom, too, had been the culmination of a dream.

“Men laugh at the dreamers,” Derry said, “then honor them after they are dead.”

“That’s the cruelty, the sadness of it, isn’t it?”

“Not to the dreamer.  Do you think that Pere Marquette cared for what smaller minds might think, or Frances Willard?  They had their vision backed by a great faith in the rightness of things, and so Marquette followed the river and planted the cross, and Frances Willard blazed the way for the thing which has come to pass.”

After lunch they motored to Drusilla’s.  They used one of Dr. McKenzie’s cars.  Derry had ceased to draw upon his father’s establishment for anything.  He lived at the club, and met his expenses with the small balance which remained to his credit in the bank.