Before Eleanor realized, she had lost all consciousness of self and was pleading passionately leaning forward across the desk.
"Isn't Christ's theory better, Senator, to make all the unfit into fit? Isn't Christ's theory the theory of science? Science aims to make a whole field of perfect corn; not just one perfect cob. I know that; for I read it in your speech at the opening of the Agricultural College. If we keep on sacrificing the interests of the many to the interests of the few, aren't we working back to savagery, Senator?"
The Senator drew the finest of the roses from the jar. "It's a matter of taste, perhaps, Miss Eleanor; but I prefer this to a whole jarful of scrubs."
"Then you are not working for democracy. It's just as Mrs. Williams says, all you foreign multimillionaires are subverting our Nation by working for old fashioned despotism in disguise; sacrificing the many to the few."
"Oh, does Mrs. Williams say that?" asked Moyese reflectively, pushing back from the desk and clasping his hands round one knee. "That may be; republicanism doesn't necessarily mean letting the blockheads rule! It may mean giving equal opportunity for the fit men to come to the top and rule. Did you come in to talk over these things with me, Miss Eleanor? I must make a convert of you; it would win over Wayland and Williams and your father."
"No, I didn't. I came in here by mistake. The operator told me I'd find a public telephone across the road; and I wasn't noticing where I was going, and I came in here; but all the way down, I had been thinking of you, Senator Moyese. I kept thinking if you could only be made to see the New Day that is dawning, perhaps you would meet it half way. I rode in the driver's seat coming down; and he told me how he lost his arm; Senator, think of the hero in him?"
"And you thought there might be some of the hero in me, too?" Moyese laughed, the noiseless genial laugh creasing his chin and his white vest.
"While you laugh, you are letting your rose wither."
He handed the rose to her. "Yes, I know that fellow. I was in the Kootenay when he lost his arm, torn out all bloody right from the shoulder socket; had to pry the cogs up to get him out. They collected a purse of a thousand for him; but he wouldn't take a cent: handed it over to the hospital. Something in that fellow bigger than self kind of popped out and surprised himself."
She noticed him looking at the wall clock as he talked, but not being a business woman did not know what that meant.