"Would it hurt?"
"Hurt! My dear, it would be another Johnstown Flood."
"Oh, dear! Do many know that?"
"Yes, dear; but it wouldn't drown the men who will own the water-power, so what does it matter to this world of yours."
"But is that right—to look at anything in that horribly selfish way?"
"In what other way do rich financiers look at anything? But there will come a time when a change will dawn. Look, dear, down there; see the rainbow dancing on the spray. Well, that's the way that public opinion is going to come in among us soon—in a rainbow of truth."
"It will be beautiful everywhere then?" Lassie asked, smiling.
"Very beautiful!" Alva stared down upon the writhing, leaping waters below; "and I shall have given my all towards the dream's fulfilment. And I shall have learned from him how to devote my life to the same great ends that he served. Lassie, when one comprehends that not happiness but usefulness is the end to be worked towards, then one begins to see what living really means."
"How much it is all going to mean to you!"
"How much? Ah, only he and I can guess at that! There will be something quite different from all the imaginings, in our sweet, sad days of work and suffering and comforting. I dare not try to picture it to myself. I only think often of how I shall pause here in my walks to come, and steal a long look over this scene, so as to go home and describe it. He loves beauty and he loves wood and water."