She stopped and smiled down into the face of the man. His emotions were in a whirl. This girl always dissected his soul with a smile on her face.
“I wish I might awaken you and your poor victims by showing you and them that righteousness makes not for a home in the skies, but for greater happiness and prosperity for everybody right here in this world. Don’t you really want the little babies to have enough to eat down there at Avon? Do you really want the President to support you in the matter of the 172 cotton schedule, and so increase the misery and sorrow at your mills? You don’t know, do you? that one’s greatest happiness is found only in that of others.” She stood looking at him for a few moments, then turned away.
The President rose and held out his hand to her. She almost laughed as she took it, and her eyes shone with the light of her eager, unselfish desire.
“I––I guess I’m like Paul,” she said, “consumed with zeal. Anyway, you’ll wear my rose, won’t you?”
“Indeed I will!” he said heartily.
“And––you are not a bit afraid about a second term, are you? As for party principle, why, you know, there is only one principle, God. He is the Christ-principle, you know, and that is way above party principle.”
Under the spell of the girl’s strange words every emotion fled from the men but that of amazement.
“Righteousness, you know, is right-thinking. And that touches just that about which men are most chary, their pocketbooks.”
She still held his hand. Then she arched her brows and said naïvely: “You will find in yesterday’s Express something about Avon. You will not use your influence with Congress until you have read it, will you?” And with that she left the room.
A deep quiet fell upon the men, upon the great executive and the great apostle of privilege. It seemed to the one that as the door closed against that bright presence the spirit of night descended; the other sat wrapped in the chaos of conflicting emotions in which she always left him.