“Any one I know. Every one knows some one. I don’t mean to say that I’m a Joan of Arc; but I shall do what I can.”
“And how shall you begin?”
“I’ll begin with father and with—”
She stopped at the second name, though to me the fact did not become significant till afterward.
“That’s what I meant,” she resumed, “when I said I was going back on his account.”
“You mean?”
“He doesn’t see why we should be in it. He’s like so many Americans; he hasn’t emerged from the eighteen-hundreds. He still thinks of the New World as if it was a new creation that had nothing to do with the Old. He doesn’t see that there’s only one world and one race of men, wherever they are and whatever they do. To him Americans are like souls that get over to paradise. They’re safe and can afford to dwell safely. They’re no longer concerned with the sorrows and struggles of the people left on earth.”
It was to get light on my own way that I asked, “And what are you going to say to convince him?”
“I don’t know yet. I shall say what the moment suggests.”