I
Far off, deep in the underground regions of the city at the focus of the republic's vast industrialism, the presses were reeling and clanging again, heavy with their story of disaster. The civilization of the day went on.
Somewhere out upon the mountain tops, somewhere in the forests, the forces of nature gathered, marched on toward the sea. Somewhere dumbly, mutely, uncomplaining, the great river and its mate the great power, inter-stellar, not international—they two, as he but now vauntingly had dreamed, erstwhile silent partners of John Rawn—did their work.... For whom? For what? Answer that, my brothers. The answer is your own. As you and I shall speak in that answer, so shall our children eat well sleep well, in days yet to come, in this country which we still call our own, now all too little ours.
II
It was far past midnight when John Rawn again came down the stair, sobered and whitened by what he had seen in the death chamber. He tiptoed now back to the library door, through which and beneath whose silken curtains still there pierced a little shaft of light. He opened the door, peered in.
He saw Virginia sitting there silent, white, unagitated, her features cameo-sharp, her skin waxen, indeed marble white, a woman as motionless, as silent, apparently as little animate as the one he had left behind him in the death chamber beyond the stair. She turned her eyes, not her face, toward him, but did not speak. The edge of her gown was moist, stained.
John Rawn looked in turn at the long figure upon the couch, motionless, silent, its hands folded. Neither did it speak to him. Suddenly oppressed, suddenly afraid, he turned once more away. Irresolution was in his soul, uncertainty.
Rawn was hardly sure that he still lived, that he still was the same John Rawn he once had known. It seemed impossible that all these things could have fallen upon him, who had not deserved them! He pitied himself with a vast pity, revolting at the many injustices of fortune now crowding upon him, a wholly blameless man. Why, a day before, he had held in his hand power such as few men could equal; had had, presently before him, power none other ever could hope to equal. That opportunity still existed. But how now could he avail himself of that opportunity, how could he go on to be the great John Rawn, if this figure on the couch could not arise, could not speak to him, could not perform the obvious duty of rendering needful assistance to him, John Rawn? The cruelty of it all rankled in the great and justice-loving soul of Mr. Rawn. Why, he was penniless—he—John Rawn! He was not even sure about his wife, yonder. She had said things to him he could not understand, could not believe.
He left the room, and walked still farther down the hall, his head sagging, his lower lip pendulous, his face warped into a pucker of self-pity—so absorbed, that at first he did not heed an approaching footfall. He paused almost in touch of some one who approached him in the half-lighted hall; some one who was coming down the stair and along the hall with steady tread.
III