"Because they'd tighten up the grip of a few men on the neck of the people! I don't know whether you call that being a Socialist or not, and I don't care. Change is coming. It's not the fault of the poor that it's coming. It's the fault of the rich. I broke them up—because things can't go on this way, money rolling Up all the time for a few, and life getting harder all the time for so many. God didn't make the rivers and the mountains and the forests for that purpose—to give them to a few. We've got to make changes, and big ones, in this government, or we're gone. I'm no Socialist at all. I don't want what some one else has won—if he's won it fair. But the wrong is in our government—the very one of all on earth that meant fair play. We don't get it—now. Some day we must. I don't see what difference it makes what name you give the new form of government. There must be change, that's all; or else we're gone!
"Well now, what they wanted me to do was to give that all to a few. I couldn't do it! By God! Mrs. Rawn, I faced it and I tried, and I couldn't do it! Maybe I was wrong. Anyhow, here I stand."
(Rawn and Virginia)
V
"Do you know," she said at length, slowly, "these are things that never came to my mind in all my life? I never in all my life thought of any of these things. I only wanted—"
"You wanted to win. You wanted what most American women do—money—station—power—to be envied; that's what you played for. Well, you've won! Look at all this about you. I don't suppose there's a woman in this town more admired by men or more envied by women than you. You've got what you craved, I reckon."
"I thought I had. But now, to-night, I'm not so sure!"
"You couldn't give it up," he sneered, "any more than Grace could, and she couldn't any more than a leopard could change its spots. It goes too deep. You couldn't expect anything different.