Then she told of the part he had played in the unfortunate scene at the mill, and his conduct lost nothing in the telling. Insensibly led on by Petrovitch's well-managed prompting in monosyllables she went on to what had come after, and how she had been made the means of changing Roland Ferrier's determination to prosecute and punish the 'hands.'

'Yes,' said Petrovitch, when she had finished, 'I know right well that he is no coward and no fool; and as for his not advising you, I am not sure that he was not right. I, too, will not advise you. There is only one thing I could tell you to do, and that I will not tell you now. Wait, wait, and be patient, and study; and if after a while you still ask me for advice I will give it to you.'

'I know what you think,' she said impulsively. 'You think I'm young and foolish, and that I shall be changeable. You think I have taken up these beliefs without enough thought or understanding. If I could only tell you ... how altered everything seems, what a splendid new light seems to be breaking over everything. Do you think, what you said just now, that knowing the truth could make me unhappy? Oh no. It is knowledge without action that makes me sad.'

'No, no; that is not my thought,' he answered, in a voice that seemed to have caught a thrill from her own. 'Think a little longer. Whatever action you take will not lose strength because it is well thought, well considered. If you ever ask me again, I promise you I will not hesitate a moment to answer; but I would rather the answer came from you than from me.'

'That's one of your leading principles, isn't it? Independent thought.'

'Yes. How can people ever hope to act rightly, if they will persist in delegating other people to think for them?'

'But ordinary people can't thoroughly think out all subjects. One is obliged to take a great many of one's opinions at second-hand.'

'Well, but neither can one act in all directions—and where one has to act one should think first. As for taking opinions at second-hand, that is a thing you should never dare to do. If you are not able to think for yourself, you should have no opinions. Your English Clifford has told you that if you have no time to think you have no time to believe.'

'I am sure you are right. But I am sure, too, that to think for one's self means in most circles social ostracism; and it wants very strong convictions to make one face that.'

'Social ostracism,' answered the Socialist, with unutterable contempt in the gesture which accompanied his words; 'social ostracism, and by whom imposed? Look at the people around you.' Clare glanced nervously at Mrs Quaid. 'See how small are their aims, how trivial their interests, how great their love of ease, how small their love of truth; see what narrow minds they have, what blinded eyes; see all the good that would be in them crushed out by the very conventionalities which they uphold. How can we think it of any value, the opinion of such as these? Or if their condemnation should pain us, what a little thing is such a pain compared with the lifelong consciousness of having, from the fear of it, crushed out the spark of truth in our own souls? What a little thing compared with eternal truth is even life itself! We come out of the darkness, and into that darkness must return. Is it not better, seeing the little time that is ours, to know that we at least have listened to the wail of agony that ever goes up to the deaf heavens?—that we have done what we could in our little day to help forward a better time for those who shall come after us, than to know that we have had the good opinion of "respectable people"?'